


Apocalypse

by Lightning_Strikes_Again



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Appearances from Team Voltron and Team Sincline and Galra Tech, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lightning just wildin' with AR universe, Some Humor, angst (but I like happy endings), nudity/sexual situations, some Zonerva, survival situations, trauma and shock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-01-25 15:38:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21358615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightning_Strikes_Again/pseuds/Lightning_Strikes_Again
Summary: Part of theAdrenaline Rush Alternate Universe (AR-AU) Collection.The cast of the VLD human!AU storyAdrenaline Rushsurvives a massive world attack during a race weekend, only to face limited resources, cramped shelter, destroyed livelihoods, and the challenges of falling in love while everything else falls apart.Note: This drabble is not related to the main Adrenaline Rush plot but is just a story for fun.
Relationships: Allura/Lotor (Voltron), Lotura
Comments: 34
Kudos: 62
Collections: Adrenaline Rush Alternate Universe (AR-AU) Stories





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, and welcome to this first upload in the Adrenaline Rush Alternate Universe collection! Those who have been following me on Tumblr might recall that I struggle to stay-on plot and have written [a couple of AU drabbles based on the AR human universe](https://the-lightning-strikes-again.tumblr.com/post/186691497719/hi-is-there-another-place-that-you-publish-your%E2%80%9D%20rel=). The lovely graciebunsart has even created some [fanart](https://the-lightning-strikes-again.tumblr.com/post/186613097794/graciebunsart-so%E2%80%9D%20rel=). for Apocalypse. I'd been waiting to upload this after I got AR ch 6 up, so thank you for your patience, for those who have been waiting on this. 
> 
> If you read this drabble, I hope you like it!

Survivors sit in silence.

The Olkari City skyline has fallen in a rain of missiles. The remains of the city are a scorch mark upon the face of the earth—one of thousands of cities targeted. The bombs still fall as massive earthquake and booms.

Merla Falconieri sits by herself in a dark corner of the Olkari underground bomb shelters, wrapped in an emergency blanket. Her eyes are wide and unseeing—her pale fingers tight in the material. Sicily is gone. Her seven-billion-dollar empire is shredded to pieces. Everything she has been racing towards.

Gone in a strike.

.

Zarkon Dalir stands in the middle of the large shelter. His cell phone flashes with his wife’s name and a _roaming_ signal. The grid is down, but he still tries to call her. He runs a frenzied hand through his hair. He knows that Galra Tech has been destroyed in the air strike against Dubai. All of his billions of dollars lay buried beneath rubble, but he does not care about that. So far, shortwave radio suggests only the capital in Iran has been struck.

Honerva, who is tucked away in the mountains, might yet still be alive.

.

Within the shelter’s medical tent, the infamous Lotor Dalir sits on an examination table, shakily holding an oxygen mask to his soot-streaked face, trying to breathe in. His breaths are a strange rasp from smoke inhalation—unsteady, shallow. His blue eyes are dazed as he stares at the dirt floor, which is now to be his home for the foreseeable future. Olkari forces are not allowing anyone to leave while above-ground strikes continue.

His eyes still burn with the image of skyscrapers falling in bursts of light—

The emergency shelter is a remnant left over from the last world war, and it spans the full of the Olkari city underground. But the grandstands held thousands and thousands of spectators, all of them now jammed in with him, along with the rest of the city’s survivors. It is packed and stuffy with no privacy save for the bathroom stalls themselves. He looks to his left on the examination table, where a kind nurse had left her tablet. She had been entering in the names of survivors before she’d been pulled away. He sees Ezor and Zethrid’s names, along with the name of his father. He has not yet found them in the crowds.

He’d been standing in line for a funnel cake, of all things, when the attack began—

He can barely hear himself think over the many voices and sobs and shouts of the people standing around, huddling together beneath the emergency lights. Many people who once cheered his name from the grandstands now ignore him in favor of themselves, their families. He sits alone, bruised and burned, his white hair a greasy tangle down his shoulders.

No one wants an ornamental pretty boy when panicking about food, water, and safety.

“Lotor?” comes a soft, familiar alto.

He looks up to see one Allura Singh standing before him. She boasts one arm in a makeshift sling from what appears to be Keith Kogane’s jacket. Her face is sooty like his own, her white hair tinged with dirt.

“…Princess?” His vocal cords are torn with a pain every time he speaks, and his lungs burn with enough smoke inhalation to last him a lifetime, but he says her title with deep relief. Her name had not yet appeared on the survivor’s list.

He worries he might be hallucinating her—a white and pink angel glowing in the darkness—

She manages a tight, weak smile. “I am glad to see you made it. When I did not hear loud and obnoxious flirting, I worried perhaps you were dead.”

His dirty lip twitches, a spark of merriment glinting back into his eyes. He thinks of several responses but eventually asks, “Does nothing shake you, Miss Singh?”

She waves her good hand. “I’ve almost blown up once on the track. Explosions and fire are rather old hat to me now.” Her voice wavers. She is most certainly shaken despite the indignance in her tone. “But I am glad, sir, that you survived. I need your help.”

He searches her eyes in question.

She reaches into her jacket pocket, then sets a device with many wires into his limp hand. “Pidge and I are working to get a makeshift communication tower running, so that we can at least stay in contact with everyone while we’re underground. I’ve also discovered the generators here are going to last for only 48 hours.” Her voice softens. “It would mean a lot to me and my team if you were to help us. I, um…trust your ingenuity with these things.”

Lotor swallows hard at the first genuine compliment he has ever heard from her mouth. It stills his wild tongue and briefly dampens the pain he feels in his throat.

He manages only a nod.

* * *

At this point, it has been twelve hours since the initial blasts. Team Voltron has congregated in a dark corner of the underground shelter, using a quintessence-injected lamp that Pidge had been playing around with as a side project. The lamp shines light outward in a soft blue array.

Lotor limps slightly as he follows Allura. His eyes immediately strain to the small, blanketed lump in the farthest corner, with a familiar face and a tangled, half-undone braid of red hair. “Merla.” His voice tightens in worry. “What is—is she alright?”

Merla is silent, completely unacknowledging of his presence or anyone else’s, her black eyes still blown wide, full lips in a quiver of horror.

Allura turns to Lotor. “She’s, um, not really responding,” she whispers, her brows knitting in pain. “I thought maybe the light would help.”

Not far away, Pidge and Hunk are huddled together over junk pieces of old devices, squabbling—while Lance and Keith and Shiro seemingly stand guard before Merla.

People are growing restless, now that the initial shock has worn off. Some men have been eyeing Merla, who is beautiful and known for her loose ways.

Allura fails to mention to Lotor her broken arm is not from the initial blasts, but from fighting off a large man who had dared to touch the catatonic woman, and then turned against Allura as well. Allura had pulled off a wooden board from the cement walls and smacked him soundly in the face and stomped on his knee before Keith and Lance grabbed for her. Shiro had dragged the crying man off to a medical team.

No one dares to challenge Allura after seeing her raw fury, but Merla is still vulnerable.

Lotor stares, overwhelmed at the sight. He struggles to breathe for a moment. “Are you certain she is well?”

“She’s not hurt, just not responding. I think it’s, um, some kind of shock.” Allura’s voice is soft and worried. “We’re hoping she might come out of it to eat soon. Some medical workers say there will be breakfast in a few hours.”

Lotor thinks about reaching out to Merla, a spark of protectiveness lighting within him. She seems small in that moment. “Why do your friends guard her?”

Allura’s full lips press together. “You know how people are sometimes, with pretty girls and spaces like these.”

His eyes slide to hers. “And yet your friends do not guard you?” His rough voice is incredulous.

There is a glint that appears in her eye. “I’m not catatonic. And I have a very good left hook.” She grabs for his hand with her uninjured arm. “You should be careful as well, you know. Pretty boys get in trouble too.”

His voice strangles. “…You think I am a pretty boy?”

She fairly drags his lithe form to the pile before Pidge and Hunk. “That was never in question, sir.” Her face flushes a bit as she turns her face and then calls out to her friends, “Pidge, I found him at the medical station.”

“Awesome.” The little girl—how old was she even?—held up some dead wires. “I need someone who knows how the hell you connect this to the generators. I think we might need a transformer.”

The infamous Lotor Dalir stands in bewildered amazement for a moment. All around them, the sky is falling. Sincline LLC and Galra Tech are fragmented. And yet Team Voltron remains focused as ever.

Allura Singh is the grounding factor.

* * *

Lotor is slower than usual, his smoke inhalation leaving him in pain and with a fogginess in his mind, further scattered by anxiety from the blasts, and his increasing realization that his life of luxury is now over, along with his identity as a rich and powerful man. He tries to munch on the slim granola bar the medical workers have passed around as everyone’s breakfast, but it tastes like ash in his mouth. They’re rationing in anticipation for a longer airstrike above-ground.

Eventually, he swallows down the meager breakfast, giving his full attention to the project before him.

His sooty fingers shakily work to tie the wires, using a blade belonging to Keith Kogane to cut the ends. He tries to measure things out correctly the first time, only to realize that he still has to go by visual look, without such tools.

Everything feels like a dream.

He places the blade in his mouth, his dirty fingers too busy to guard it from those who would steal it while he looks away.

As he works, Allura sits before Merla, unwrapping the other woman’s granola bar for her. “Can you…eat?” she whispers, voice strained.

Merla’s black eyes blink, and for the first time, she looks directly at Allura, her pretty face haggard. “Sicily,” she whispers. Her smooth and sultry voice is modulated in an odd way, as if she is not inside her own body. “Seventh Kingdom. Sicily.”

“I have a granola bar here for you,” Allura says, lifting her voice in a false optimism. “Don’t you want it?” The task of feeding Merla has fallen to Allura by proxy. Merla will not respond to any male—not even Lotor—and Pidge is too busy building a communication satellite out of junk. “It’s quite tasty, actually,” Allura adds, hoping to entice her. “Peanut butter and dark chocolate. Lotor says you like dark chocolate. It’s your favorite food to eat, he says.”

But even Merla’s words to Allura were a garbled mess. “Sicily,” Merla repeats in distant horror. Her voice falls back into Italian. “_La mia azienda.” _

Allura’s brows furrow in confusion. “I’m sorry—? I don’t understand.”

Nearby, Lotor pulls the blade out of his mouth. His voice is still rough from smoke. “Her company.” His blue eyes focus upon them both in worry. “Seventh Kingdom, or Settimo Regno, out of Sicily.” He swallows hard, remembering his own corporate empire is decimated as well. “She loved her company above all else.” He looks down and snaps off another piece of insulation from the wire. His face is in a great twist of emotion. His movements are jerky in anxiety. “We should take her to medical tent. This is not her.”

Allura bites her lip and complains softly, “She doesn’t want to move.” She turns back to Merla, tearing off a piece of granola. “Please, you must eat. We have all lost our homes and our things. But we must still eat.”

The woman blinks at her slowly. In doing so, her dark eyes brighten with tears. "_Settimo Regno,_” she repeats, as if it were the name of a god who had fallen. Her hands fall from the blanket, limp in her lap. Her red hair seems to have lost its flame, her black eyes dull in loss.

Allura hesitates, looking at Lotor. His face is tight. Allura turns back to Merla and gently curls the woman’s fingers around the piece of granola. “Please eat.”

And then the other woman swallows hard. She blinks again and looks down at her hand—the granola piece a meager offering compared to her usual fare at ritzy restaurants. The dark chocolate smears onto her pale palm. “Why_?_” she asks brokenly. But she manages to pluck the granola from her palm and shakily raise it to her mouth.

Merla manages to munch on the granola a little at a time, so long as Allura drops another piece into her hand and nudges her to eat more.

Lotor occasionally watches the exchange in silence, feeling humbled in strange ways.

* * *

Time passes.

Lotor wipes sweat from his brow. The air conditioners in the underground shelter are not suited for the mass crowd. He is not used to working alongside a 17-year-old, and he struggles to remain patient as Pidge snaps at him in demand for his part of the wiring work.

“You cannot rush perfection,” he says, voice strained as he connects the cables to her satellite.

Pidge is hot and tired, her glasses dirty. One lens is cracked, and she looks like she desperately needs a nap. “We don’t have time for perfection.”

His eyes slide to hers. “And we do not have time to fail.”

Her breath hitches. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I want this done and over with.” She blinks away tears quickly, pulling up her glasses to scrub at her eyes. She is not a child. She cannot break down in front of the famous Lotor Dalir. She’s dreamed of the chance to intern for him at Sincline LLC, simply to pick his brain.

But she never imagined they would ever work together like this, shoving together scraps simply in the name of getting a phone signal out.

“It will be alright, Miss Holt.” His voice is tired as he inserts the cables into the skeleton of the satellite. The more tired he becomes, the more heavily accented his voice is. “I am many things, but a poor engineer is not one of them.”

Her lips quiver. She nods, trusting in his words.

In that moment, Lotor swallows hard to hide the sudden blip of uncertainty in him as he works. He cannot afford to show uncertainty in front of a child. In front of people counting on him.

He feels suddenly protective of Pidge, who is a spitfire but wavering in the pressure. His chest swells with a painful emotion. He wonders if this is how Allura feels about Merla. “It will be alright,” he says again, voice stronger.

He turns his head once more.

Allura is leaning against the cement wall, using a borrowed pencil from a medical worker to sketch a generator design onto the floor. Her face is tense, but she continues to sketch. She is speaking merrily to Merla, explaining how she hopes to optimize the generators’ energy with the quintessence from Pidge’s experimental lamp. Merla sits lifelessly beside her wrapped in a blanket, her face aged, and yet tracking Allura’s expanding design with a listless, half-interest.

Lotor’s eyes focus on the tightness in Allura’s body and the way her voice is straining.

Allura is in pain and telling no one. 

Again.

* * *

By the time he and Pidge have a prototype satellite antenna ready to test, the girl has nothing left in her water bottle, and she acts even more achy and tired than before. She rubs at her throat from the side effects of her own smoke inhalation.

Lotor offers her the remains of his water bottle and says, “Go to the generator room. But do not go alone. Take one of your friends with you.”

Pidge makes a face at him, as if ready to tell him off for ordering her around. But then her expression falters at the realization that Lotor Dalir has given up his own water. That he is concerned. Her small lips purse together. She nods and says, “You be careful too.”

“Of course,” he responds tiredly, standing with a groan. At his knee, the leather of his racing pants has ripped, his dark skin reddened from working tirelessly on the dirt floor. It is his bad knee, which bears a rod from an old crash. It aches with every blast that shakes the earth.

Pidge, still spry, holds out her hand to help him. Her eyes are dark with a pained realization—that the infamous and godlike Lotor Dalir was very human, with particularly obvious weaknesses. She can see the glimmer of scarring upon his exposed knee—scars that magazines had carefully photoshopped out.

His fingers grab tight onto her tiny hand, and he heaves himself up. “Apologies,” he moans lightly. He soon towers over her, releasing her hand. Her fingers are as dirty and greasy as his own. “I’m not designed for this environment.” He looks down, his handsome face twisting at the realization that he is a disaster.

“Obviously,” the girl huffs. “Do I need to find a walker for you too?”

Lotor’s eyes slide to hers in an incredulous mix of humor and indignance. He runs his dirty hand through his hair in a haughty attempt to look more put together, despite the sweat upon his brow and the bone-deep exhaustion in every line of his body. “I am only ten years older than yourself. I do not need a walker. Simply a bath and a fine wine, and I’ll be just fine.”

Pidge eyes him with a worry, despite her harsh words. Some part of her hadn’t been joking about wanting to find something to help him. Lotor Dalir is supposed to be undefeatable. If the end of the world defeats him, then what would the outcome be for anyone else?

“Okay,” she says slowly. She swallows hard. “Just…don’t die. And don’t let your leg fall off or anything. Alright?”

His face softens, and his lip twitches up into a huff of a laugh. He is fond of this little spitfire who can keep up with him technologically and yet has no filter on her mouth. He hopes the circumstances do not steal away her fire. “Very well, little one.”

He dares to pat her head as if she were five, realizing that she is still the perfect height to do so.

She makes a face and gags at the title, but even she finds solace in the brief moment of normalcy.

* * *

Soon, the girl runs off with Hunk and Lance to the generator room, the three of them working together to haul the satellite antenna through the crowds.

Lotor turns to Allura, who has stopped sketching to cradle her injured arm. He kneels down before her. “Miss Singh.” His voice is still ruined by smoke, harsh and halted—he does not feel suave at all before her anymore. Perhaps it does not matter. “We should get you to a tent and have that arm of yours checked out properly. You’re looking even more miserable than before.”

She looks up at him. Her eyes are bloodshot in exhaustion and pain. “I am sorry, what?”

“Your arm.”

“It is fine,” she says lightly, but her voice catches.

“It is swelling, love.” He tries to soften his voice as he holds out his dirty hand. “Come on. It is time you gave yourself some attention too.”

Allura hesitates. “There is so much to do,” she complains. But she grabs onto his hand, locking her fingers against his.

Keith and Shiro remain beside Merla, ever watchful, also protecting the various tools and wires the team has accrued.

* * *

Allura finds herself clinging close to Lotor as they move away from the place Team Voltron had claimed for its own. Fourteen hours in, people are settling into territories. Most do not wander the full of the underground, in fear of losing their own people—of running into the unhinged souls who would prey on the lost—

It is still a loud and cramped space, the overhead fans doing little to cool the flush of hot summer. The lines for the bathroom stalls stretch in long lanes of whining children and stressed adults. Above them, the ground still rumbles with distant explosions.

“They will fix you up,” Lotor murmurs to Allura as comfortingly as he can, guiding her to the medical tent. “And then it will be over.”

Her breath is hitched. “They have to reset it, don’t they.”

“I’m afraid so.”

This is the first genuine crack in the armor of Allura Singh’s unfaltering spirit. Lotor feels her fear.

“Can…um,” she whispers. “When they do, can you hold my hand? I’m terribly bad at these sorts of things.”

Lotor, as exhausted as he is, barely manages a twitch of his lips. “Of course, love.”

* * *

Soon, Lotor finds himself staring at Allura’s small, lithe hand in his own as she sits on an examination table in the medical tent.

Her breath is coming in short, quick gasps. She tightens her fingers against his, enough to inspire a slight wince from him. A doctor is standing with Allura’s broken forearm in hand.

And then, _crunch._

The instant the doctor snaps her arm back into place, Allura breaks. Tears rise to her eyes as she gasps in pain, her vision searing white. She swoons on the examination table.

Lotor surges forward. He catches her by the shoulders, but she leans into him limply. All the strength she has in her body falters, and she strangles out a muffled cry against his shirt.

He looks up, almost overwhelmed, at the doctor. Then he looks back down and tries to comfort the trembling Allura Singh. “It is over, love.” He hears the doctor quickly working to bind her arm and cast it with quick, readymade plaster that hardens around her skin. “The worst is entirely over.”

She is still gasping against him. It is a level of vulnerability that leaves him speechless for words of comfort. He lightly holds onto her, rubbing her back. She is warm and smells of ash and antiseptic. Her body is small against his own, fitting well within the frame of his shoulders.

He realizes he is the only one to whom she’s shown weakness.

As soon as the thought hits him, he worries that perhaps Allura can read his mind, for she pulls away shakily, unable to meet his gaze. She stares down at her broken arm, now in a cast. “I am sorry,” she whispers, scrubbing at her eyes with her good hand. Her right arm still appears purple and slightly swollen around the edges of the cast as she sits there in a daze of pain. Her eyes are big and watery, and she looks younger than she is. “I am so sorry. I do not know what’s come over me.”

Lotor’s voice is dry and strained. “It’s only the end of the world.”

It’s a silly enough response that it inspires a weak huff of amusement from her.

“…Yes,” she whispers suddenly. "That must be it."

But there is not enough pain medication to go around, and many are injured worse than Allura is. The doctor gives her a single pill of aspirin in hopes it can take the edge off.

She stares ahead, trying to gather herself together to return to the group. Her full lips, cracked and pale, are set in a grim line. “It’ll be fine,” she says. She is still a little breathless. “I can sort of feel it kicking in now.”

Lotor worriedly turns away from her. “You are lying, and I can tell.” The doctors have moved on, too busy with other patients to ask questions or settle fears. “One lousy pill is not enough for you.”

Allura shakily inhales. “I’m fine.”

But she does not try to stand up.

Lotor’s jaw clenches, and he says, “Stay here until I return. Perhaps I can negotiate with them on your behalf.” And he begins to trail after the nearest nurse he can find.

Allura watches him curiously. At first, she thinks Lotor might be truly performing a favor for her, to speak to the medical staff. A warmth stretches over her bruised body, that he is caring for her. But then, as she watches him, her brows begin to furrow.

The nurse is a little too close. Lotor is leaning in, tilting his head, and stretching those wide, full lips of his.

He’s _flirting_ with her.

At the sight, Allura looks away, her warmth disappearing into a usual sense of disappointment and loss. As if she could expect anything more from such a scoundrel of a man.

With another shaky inhale, she forces herself off the examination table, cradling her injured arm close to her body. She decides to chance returning to Team Voltron without him.

* * *

Sometime later, Lotor returns to the corner of the shelter claimed by Voltron. Merla is still sitting in the corner. She has a half-empty water bottle beside her. It looks as though she has attempted to re-braid her ponytail, but she is still in a daze. She occasionally glances at Allura.

Allura herself is laying on her side and facing the wall. She’s pulled Keith’s jacket into a makeshift pillow beneath her head. Merla’s blanket is draped over her.

Lotor looks over Merla first. The woman briefly meets his eyes then looks away.

“She just fell asleep.” Her voice is still halted. Some of her words are in Italian, as if she is jumbled herself—unable to register where she is in time or space. “Leave her alone.”

Lotor is holding a new bottle of water in one hand and something else in the other. “I have something for her,” he says, voice rough. His temples are beaded with sweat. His neck bares a strange, reddened mark of lips upon him. His clothes are disheveled and wrinkled from lusting hands. He kneels before Allura, setting aside the water bottle. Then he reaches out to her shoulder and gently shakes her awake. “Miss Singh.” His velvet voice catches oddly. “I…spoke to medical staff. They had more medication than they thought.” He procures an entire bottle of aspirin before her eyes.

Allura blearily stares at him. “Oh,” she says innocently, struggling up. In her pain and exhaustion, she fails to notice Lotor’s state.

He opens up the water bottle for her and unscrews the cap of the aspirin bottle, looking each way as if in fear it would be taken from them.

“How did you manage to get a whole bottle?” she askes in awe.

His lips press together, and he looks away. The great Lotor Dalir, the heir to a multi-billion-dollar empire, had begged for an aspirin on Allura’s behalf. The nurse had asked for something to repay the favor. He tries not to think about selling himself out for a four-dollar bottle of aspirin.

“You called me a pretty boy,” he says easily. He tries to smile, but it is partially a grimace. “I…flirted a bit.”

Allura looks up at him, eyes narrowing. “…Is that truly what you were doing? Flirting just for an aspirin?”

“Yes, love.” He hides the bottle in the pocket of her jacket, searching her face. “But do keep this a secret. You are not supposed to have this.”

The woman’s face rises with a consternation and amusement. “I cannot believe,” Allura says, “you get away with everything that you do. Perhaps you should teach me how to flirt like that.”

He pulls away from her, shifting his hair to hide the mark upon his neck. He struggles to meet her eyes, a face rising upon his face. “I would rather not,” he confesses. “You are too sweet.”

Her dirty face stretches.

* * *

Merla watches the exchange from her corner, eyeing the tense lines of Lotor’s body and the way he worries over Allura.

Lotor feels her gaze and flickered his eyes up to her, swallowing hard, begging her to say nothing.

The woman looks down at her fingers. She has a pure silver ring from her father—the insignia of Settimo Regno upon it. It is the last piece of her empire that remains intact. She pulls it off her finger and slides it to him on the dirt floor. Her voice is tight. “Use this next time. So you won’t have to…flirt.”

Lotor’s fingers curl into the dirt around the ring. He stares up at Merla, his eyes widening.

Her face twists, and she looks away. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the following for reviewing last time! 
> 
> Lunar Magnolia: Thank you, dear! I’m so happy you enjoy this crazy AU, haha. I appreciate your encouragement and support! 
> 
> NickyADon: Ahh you ask a really great question about who started all the destruction! Maybe I can answer that in a future chapter. I was really excited that you noticed the flipped gender roles, and I really appreciate your support on all of these stories! 
> 
> Tuonetar: Aww, thanks for the review! Lotor Dalir may be a bit wild, but I think he’d do just about anything for Allura. I’m so glad you’re enjoying the story! 
> 
> Wallflwr97: My weakness is survival/apocalypse stories, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before this AU happened, haha. I’m so happy you like it, and thank you for your support across these stories! Also, you asked a great question that this chapter should begin to explain! 
> 
> Espanholina: Bless you for your review and support! I really like Merla, and for some reason, this AU has given me a little more space to play with her character more, haha. About Allura finding out Lotor’s secret, this chapter just might reveal something about that. *cue brow waggle.*

Pidge, Hunk, and Lance soon return. Lance is carrying an exhausted Pidge piggy-back, his own face glimmering with sweat from the setup. “We did it, guys,” he calls out. “Our satellite’s attached to the generator thingy, with the pipe thing drilled up through the ceiling. We got a call out to Pidge’s dad.”

The team looks up in surprise, and those around them pull out half-dead cellphones, desperately searching for the bars now available. The hallways erupt into a chaos, carrying on through the corridors. Allura, having no family, manages a weak smile of joy for them.

Lotor hesitantly pulls out his cellphone, which is now at ten percent. It dings several times in a row, with calls from Zethrid and Ezor. His mother’s name appears in the list, as does his father’s. His heart cracks as he exhales shakily, standing up. He calls his mother first.

Pidge slides down off Lance’s back and raises her hand to fist-bump Lotor. “Hey, we did it. Thanks for the assist.”

He returns the first-bump half-heartedly, giving her a nod of approval as he waits for his mother to pick up.

“_Lotor?_” Her voice is ragged and aged. Reception is weak. “_—okay? – Are you—_?”

“_I am fine,_” he responds in Punjabi, relief washing over him at the sound of her. “_Still looking for father. Are you safe? Do you have power?_”

But then his call cuts out, the tower overwhelmed by the demands of the thousands around him. He stares down at his phone, watching as its power falls to seven percent. Somehow, it seems even in victory, he is always defeated. Several others are breaking down in tears as they listen to the voices of their loved ones, while he hears only a dial tone.

He stands there, his sleek and expensive phone utterly useless. He feels the creeping emotion of anxiety waver into him. It’s the first time he realizes he has gone almost fifteen hours without a cigarette.

Lotor’s throat still burns from the smoke inhalation of the blasts, but that does not stop the ache of addiction within him. His fingers briefly tighten on Merla’s ring in his hand.

He pauses.

He cannot allow himself to trade it for something so mundane.

* * *

Allura stares up at Lotor, noticing the mark upon his neck—a hickey—and the way his clothes are disheveled. She feels something cold and foreboding stretch through her. Her good hand tightens upon the sacred bottle of aspirin in her jacket.

She thinks she knows what he did.

There is a broken line in him—a crack in his pride somewhere as he stands. Perhaps it is in the line of his lips, which are pulled down in frustration. Perhaps it is in the muted line of his broad shoulders as he runs a hand through his hair.

He stuffs his phone back onto his pocket and turns to her. “The generators.” His voice is rough. “You said you had an idea to amplify their power?”

She blinks and then manages a tight nod. She waves her good arm to the drawing in the dirt between herself and Merla. “They said the generators are good for only 48 hours. But I think, um, we might be able to repurpose quintessence to run as a secondary power source, given how many revolutions per minute it can crank out.”

Lotor kneels in the dirt, narrowing his eyes at the crude schematic. “You mean that we would build a turbine to run off the generator, and then re-feed its continuous energy back into the generator and into the main power lines.”

“A circuit, yes.”

Merla leans forward at that, her red braid slipping down her shoulder. “Except we don’t have quintessence down here.”

Allura looks at her. “We have Pidge’s lamp.”

The other woman’s voice is dry. “It’ll last for maybe ten hours. You need more quintessence than that if you want to keep this hell alive.” There is still a deep haunt within her, but her voice is sharper, her black eyes rising with more and more awareness.

The rest of Team Voltron crowds around in a circle.

They all know the answer to the problem. There is an incredible amount of quintessence-injected fuel above their heads, in the air-strike zone.

But someone would have to go get it.

The dilemma leaves them at a stalemate, because they are also missing several pieces to build an appropriate turbine. It is in the middle of the day, with active air strikes still rumbling overhead. No one is allowed yet to leave, and no one wants to.

No one is suicidal. There is still 33 hours left before the generators die.

Lotor’s voice, still rough from smoke, hitches. “I had a large case of quintessence in my trailer. If it still stands, I imagine we could run this place for…many days yet. Perhaps a few weeks, if need be.”

Hunk nervously taps his fingers together. “Yeah, and then we’ll all die of starvation by the end of week one.”

“That’s unlikely, Hunk,” Allura deadpans.

“He’s not wrong,” Merla cuts in. She’s tapping her fingers against her leather-clad leg, looking pensive. Her mind is a scattered collection of images from her business and psychology classes. “We have to ensure a steady supply of all basic needs.”

Around them, gangs are forming, people are tightening in around those they know. Team Voltron and the shreds of Sincline LLC and Galra Tech are not the only ones attempting to brainstorm realistic means of survival.

“Well,” Pidge whispers. “I guess we’ll…have to find some food too. Whenever we get up there.”

The airstrikes rumble above them like thunder.

* * *

Emergency aid workers eventually pass out a meager dinner—biscuits with gravy. Carbohydrates. It is obvious they are already rationing, but they do not say how long the food stores will last.

With the shelter overcrowded, there is no place to sit in the main cafeteria area. Lotor finds himself sitting back down on the floor, using a shred of biscuit to swipe up his gravy. It is by far the most unappealing meal he has ever eaten in his life, even challenging the hospital food he’d once eaten while chronically ill as a child. His face is in an uncomfortable twist as he forces himself to eat.

Allura struggles down to sit beside him, carrying her plate in her good arm. “This gravy has sausage,” she complains lightly. “I cannot eat it. Do you want my sausage pieces?”

He nods tiredly and holds out his plate.

One by one, the woman lightly pulls out the pieces of meat from her food and drops it onto his with her plastic spork.

Guilt overcomes him, that he is accepting a precious resource from her. “Perhaps, love, you should give up your vegetarianism while you are here.”

“I cannot do that,” she says, voice tight. “But I know you eat meat.”

His eyes slide to hers. In exchange, he hands her one of his biscuits.

She presses her lips together, the silent offer inspiring an odd wave of tears in her eyes. Her breath hitches with emotion. “I know what you did to help me,” she whispers. “Earlier today. And I know you didn’t really…enjoy it. You’ve been in a mood ever since.”

Lotor looks down. His face flushes oddly because he feels dirty. He is certain some people stare at him because they saw him enter into a bathroom stall with that nurse. “It was nothing.” His voice tightens. “I just want a cigarette. Forgive my irritability.”

Allura suddenly looks shamed as her eyes flicker down. “I wanted to repay you,” she whispers. She struggles to open up her hand on her injured arm. There in her palm is a cigarette lighter and a small pack of cigarettes. “I took them from the medical tent.”

His jaw drops slightly as he stares at them, then back up at her.

Her innocent eyes do not appear so innocent as she says, “I’m, um, sort of good at having sticky fingers. And I thought of you.”

Lotor hesitates for only a moment before he grabs for them, his fingers trembling. He lights one of the cigarettes, and tears burn his eyes as he breathes in on the nicotine for the first time in sixteen hours. He drags on it hard in desperation, breathing out a puff of smoke in absolute relief. “Thank you, love.” His voice breaks completely. “Thank you.”

* * *

The airstrikes continue into the evening, delaying team Voltron’s plans to sneak above ground. There is still 30 hours left on the generators, and enough food that the emergency aid workers do not look terrified.

Still time.

But the workers get flustered as they pass out sleeping bags, for there is not enough. Lotor stands in line for an hour to receive his, only to end up giving his away to a little girl and her mother he recognizes from the raceway. Her name was Kei, he remembers. She has a dazed look about her, her pretty dress ripped and soiled with dirt, but she manages a smile at the sight of him.

He returns empty-handed to their little spot in the corner of the shelter.

He feels dirty and ill, the dinner not setting well in his stomach. The tremble in his fingers is gone from the cigarettes at least. He at least has one creature comfort, which he hides in his pocket alongside Merla’s signet ring.

“Oh,” Allura calls to him in confusion, her white brows knitting together. She is actively working to unzip her sleeping bag. “Where is yours? Did you not get one?”

All around them, people are settling down into their sleeping bags, guarding them while wraiths like Lotor walk by.

The man sits down in the dirt and pulls out another cigarette. “They ran out.”

Allura huffs indignantly on his behalf, looking over him in worry. “I will share mine with you.”

Blue eyes strain to hers. “I am dirty,” he says simply. His lips twitch. “And I do not believe we would both fit.”

“We’re all dirty,” she deadpans. “And if you can keep your hands to yourself, I think I know how we would fit.”

Merla watches, her dark eyes hooded as Allura spreads out her blanket on the dirt floor with Lotor’s help. The two of them are murmuring things to one another. Lotor appears to be trying to convince her to not worry about him, and to care for herself. Allura shushes him several times, then instructs him to unzip the sleeping bag entirely and to flatten it out.

Soon, the two of them are lying on the blanket, side by side, the unzipped sleeping bag their blanket over them. It is still a bit small, and so they awkwardly cuddle close.

* * *

At some point, the two of them fall asleep. Allura’s arm in a cast is cradled between them, her face hidden in his chest because as night falls, Olkari temperatures cool as well. The shelter no longer needs air conditioning, but a heater. Allura is too tired to think much of it. Lotor is too tired to tease her.

Merla sees for the first time what Lotor looks like when he sleeps.

The stress in him completely wears away, his white brows relaxing. He looks innocent despite every dirty thing Merla knows he has done.

She huddles down into her own sleeping bag, turning away from them both, wrapping her arms around herself in want for human warmth.

Merla knows in that moment, Lotor is lost to her, just like her empire. The image of him and Allura cradled together is burned into her retinas, in a way she cannot ignore. She blinks to remove the image. Instead, it burns deeper. She blinks more rapidly, only to realize that she is crying silently into her sleeping bag. Her shoulders shudder hard, and she pulls the sleeping back top over herself, to hide. To pretend that she is not crying—only irritated with her own inability to sleep.

In the distance, she can hear some people snoring, others still awake and talking in strained whispers. A few couples are attempting to hide the sounds of desperate love-making.

Merla cannot blame them. Most think the world is ending, and there are few places to be intimate in a bomb shelter.

* * *

The noises inspire one Allura Singh to wake up. She stirs with a groan, her bleary eyes cracking open. “What on earth—?” She disjointedly tries to pull herself up, unsure if someone is in pain.

Her movements wake up Lotor, whose eyes tense immediately in realization of the sound.

“Do not pay attention, love,” Lotor murmurs to her, guiding her back down as gently as he can. His rough voice is cracked with sleep and the remains of smoke inhalation.

Allura’s face flushes hard in that moment, realizing then that she’s listening to the sounds of at least three couples making love. She presses her lips together, suddenly feeling strange. She slips back down beneath the sleeping bag. “Oh,” she whispers.

Lotor covers her ear lightly with his hand. “It will be over soon—go back to sleep.”

Her face burns against his chest as her breath hitches. She hears the crooning cry of a woman on the edge of pleasure, desperately seeking relief from the insanity around them. She hears the low moan of a man following her.

She swallows, squeezing her eyes tight. In that moment, Lotor’s arms around her feel protective. His hand is warm as he strokes her temple in a simple way. He can feel her discomfort.

“I don’t like hearing it,” she whispers into his shirt. She can still smell the slightest hint of his oud cologne—the last vestige of their past life.

Lotor continues to stroke her temple. His voice is a soft vibration against the top of her head. “Do not worry, love. I have you. The terrible beast with two backs will not get you.”

That inspires a huff from her. She pokes him in his abs hard, and he flinches at the tickle, his wide mouth stretching in a glimmer of tired amusement.

* * *

The next morning, Merla half-heartedly picks at her peanut butter and dark chocolate granola bar. Her eyes are bloodshot in ways she does not care to explain to anyone. Team Voltron has expanded with the recently found Zethrid and Ezor, who are still searching for Acxa. Zethrid’s right cheek is burned, with a salve covering the worst of the damage, but she laughs like a house when she sees Lotor Dalir for the first time, grabbing him in a large hug and squishing him to her in a flail of limbs.

The airstrikes have stopped.

There is a growing great tension in the air.

“Guys, I should do this,” Shiro is offering. “I have military training. Three years on tour. I can go alone, scope out what it looks like, and report back.”

“We might not have time to simply scope,” Lotor cuts in. He is sitting atop the sleeping bag he has shared with Allura Singh. His crossed leg is touching her knee. There is an increased friendliness between them now. “We have 23 hours before the generators fail, and Pidge and I will at least need fifteen to build the turbine and rewire the power lines.”

“Sixteen,” Pidge corrected. “We need a break for dinner time.”

“That’s important,” Hunk says, snapping his fingers.

Lotor feels distant as he hears himself say to Shiro, “I should go with you. I could guide you to the stores of quintessence.”

Shiro shakes his head. “No. You, Pidge, and Allura need to stay here. If you guys are hurt, then we’ll never get the turbine built in time.”

A solemn silence falls over everyone.

Merla stands up, swallowing hard. Her face cracks. “I know where the quintessence storage is for Galra Tech and Sincline LLC. I’ll go with you. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

Lotor stares up at her, eyes wide in surprise—and some kind of protective indignance. “You cannot go,” he says instinctively.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Her voice sharpens hard. Her eyes flicker to Allura and to her injured arm. “I owe you guys a debt. So I’m going.”

Shiro measures her up, then nods slowly. “Anyone else?”

Before someone from the group could speak, an entirely new voice rose over them. It is a deep, rough male voice. “I will go with you.”

They turn their heads to see Zarkon Dalir standing before them, his face haggard as he stares at his son, then to Shiro, his old rival.

* * *

The guards at the main entrance agree tentatively to let them out after confirming there is no major radiation in the air. One of them hands Shiro a gun upon realizing he knows how to use it.

Merla’s heart pounds as she climbs the stairs to the aboveground, the doors shuttering back. Bright sunlight strikes her eyes, and she narrows her gaze. “Ugh, this _sun_,” she complains. “I hate light.”

Shiro is before her and is the first to climb out. He pauses for a time, then calls back down, “We’re good to go.”

Merla holds Lotor’s cellphone in her hand, which is connected on call with Zethrid, who remains back with the rest of the team since she is blind in her right eye.

Lotor’s voice comes through, tense and tight. “_Is it safe?_”

She climbs up, grabbing onto Shiro’s awaiting hand. Her black eyes strain to see in the light, but soon enough, they widen hard. Her jaw slacks open in awe. “_Oh mio dio_,” she whispers. Olkari Raceway Park is a flattened pile of debris, with the wind carrying scorched trash along the burned grass. The skies are abandoned now by enemy bombers. The city in the distance is in crumples, smoking columns streaking up to the heavens. Merla tightens her hand on Shiro’s and then climbs out. “We might have a problem,” she says into the phone. “There’s nothing here. There’s—” words fail her. “_There is nothing here._”

Zarkon’s voice is the first to break the silence. It is rough. “No. There might still be something in the wreckage.” He is thinking of his son, of his wife. They all have to survive. “We keep moving.”

The three of them are shadows on a flattened horizon, the great city in shambles. The drag strip they all knew intimately was a shred of asphalt chunks, with the twisted bars of the grandstands tossed like sticks about the field. The Pits have no standing tents, the semitrailers ripped open where a bomb had fallen.

“Awesome,” Merla deadpans. “So we keep moving toward _what,_ exactly? Every quintessence store is going to be destroyed in this mess.” She raises a hand to cover her eyes. “Quintessence can’t survive an explosion like that.”

Zarkon turns to the woman who he once thought would be his daughter-in-law. She is unsettled, her eyes a little wild. He notices her hand is missing her famous signet ring.

He hears Lotor’s muffled voice over the phone. “_What about Lookout Tower? Would they have stored anything there?_”

Lookout Tower is now only several bricks tall. But three shadows trudge toward it dutifully. As they walk, they see a tire from a motorcycle. The ripped roll cage from a stock car. A body twisted between pipes.

Shiro’s steps strengthen, his prosthetic arm glimmering in the light. “Guys, I see something.” He begins to jog forward. “Do you see that?”

Zarkon and Merla narrow their eyes.

There, in the rubble of Lookout Tower, is a shaking form, huddled beneath metal sheets. It is a slight woman, her body wrapped around a glowing container, with an empty snack bag of chips at her feet.

Merla’s eyes widen. “…Acxa?”

The woman named Acxa is a stuttering, shell-shocked mess. She clutches onto the container of quintessence as a night light in the midst of a nightmare, her back burned and cracking with blood from beneath her motor suit. She is rocking back and forth. She does not see any of the three of them, her eyes wide.

“Falling,” she whispers over and over again. “Falling.”

In her arms is enough quintessence to fuel their project and more. Perhaps she’d thought it a bargaining chip if the enemy dropped down from the sky. She’d missed the evacuation.

She’d survived 23 hours on her own.

It takes time, but they manage to gently untangle her from the debris and from the container of quintessence. Zarkon carries her piggy-back to avoid further injuring or touching her burns, and she shivers against him like a leaf in a storm. Zarkon has known Acxa for several years. He speaks to her in Farsi, raising his voice into a light lilt. It smooths the harsh man into something like a father.

Shiro carries the quintessence container while Merla searches the area, her eyes straining.

“Wait," she says suddenly.

She sees a medical kit in the debris of Lookout Tower and a few other snacks from what might have been a vending machine. She grabs everything that she can, thinking of Lotor kneeling before Allura Singh, his body aching from what he had done to obtain her a small measure of comfort.

For the first time since the first bomb fell, she feels a sense of purpose. Her mind begins to calculate.

She finds a Milky Way bar and grabs it for Lotor, then says into the phone, “There’s some stuff out here after all. We’ll have to make a couple trips.”

* * *

Two hours later finds Acxa is sleeping on her stomach in the medical tent. Zarkon remains at her side, his hand kept prisoner by her steel grip. There is new hope in the underground shelter—that someone could survive. That there are things to scavenge. That they have a new energy source to keep the generators running.

Lotor stares at his father on occasion from the large project table that he and Pidge stand at. He feels a flicker of jealousy at the attention he shows Acxa, but he looks away, still in relief that Acxa is alive.

Allura is a flutter of energy, renewed by the hope and by the pain medication she’s consistently been taking, thanks to Lotor. Her words are quick commands as she guides Pidge through building the base of the turbine out of the fan scraps from a car.

Merla is in the height of her glory as well, giving orders to a new band of scavengers and mapping out the husk of the raceway on a piece of paper as she talks. She somehow manages to worm her way into an administrative position with the emergency aid teams, and her sharp voice inspires their respect. No one questions her orders.

She looks up at Allura, who is now speaking to Lotor. Their voices lilt in Punjabi—a language Merla does not understand. They appear to be arguing over the design of the turbine, which is not unlike them. Allura has a tendency to stand on her tip-toes to try leveling her gaze at Lotor. It makes her seem only smaller against the tall man, who stares down his nose at her with a playful jaunt.

Merla manages a twitch of her lips as she then looks down.

There are twenty-seven thousand people crammed into the city’s shelters.

That’s twenty-seven thousand people who need a leader.

She can let go of one in exchange for that.

* * *

Over the following days, Allura struggles with basic actions while her arm heals. She carries a pleased look in her eyes as she stares at the rejuvenated emergency lights and a rebuilt stereo playing airy music into the now-cool halls of the shelter. But her face flushes as she attempts to open up a bag of chips from a vending machine—a sacred dessert from the bombed fields of the raceway.

She curses at it lightly, then curses at Lotor, who is not there to help her. The curses are without fire. It is raining outside, and she knows Lotor is attempting to collect the rain to take a bath and wash his hair. He is still a vain peacock of a man, even though everyone else is as dirty as he is.

The word _dirt_ gives her pause. It makes her think of how every night, Lotor initially refuses to share a sleeping bag with her, saying, “_But I am dirty._”

It’s hit her now that his statement is not about the dirt on his face or the sweat on his brow. He hesitates to walk into the medical tent for any reason—even to see Acxa. She knows when he says, _But I am dirty,_ he is thinking of a particular nurse.

Allura’s been looking for her, but so far the girl has managed to avoid her.

Not that it would matter when Allura herself cannot even open up a bag of chips.

She makes a whine in the back of her throat and then tries to bite the crazy thing open. It’s at that point, somebody pulls the bag from her hand and tears it open for her.

One Merla Falconieri stands before her, a sculpted brow raised. “Lotor is right,” she murmurs. “You _are_ terrible at asking for help. But I suppose I know a little of that myself.”

Allura flushes a bit in embarrassment. She awkwardly tries to brush back some flyaways and spit out a foil piece of the chip bag. Then she clears her throat. “Oh. Merla. Hello.”

Merla hands her back the bag, looking unimpressed. “You’re not supposed to bite it.”

She manages a nervous laugh. “Ah, well. You know how it is.” She wiggles her broken arm in a cast, and it rather makes her appear that she is imitating a chicken. “I have to make do.”

The other woman tilts her head, looking Allura over. “Yes. I imagine so. I see you also have difficulty brushing your hair.”

Allura’s eyes widen innocently, face flushing further. Now that Merla is recovered from the shock of losing her empire—having successfully snatched another one in this new world—she is sharp and calculating again, moving in sly ways. Many of her words carry multiple meanings. Allura never quite knows whether Merla is attempting to help or insult her.

But then the woman’s face softens. “Sit down here. I will comb it for you.”

“Oh,” Allura says, stuttering. “You do not have to do that. I do not even have a comb to—”

“—I do.”

Allura is not sure to which comment Merla is responding. The woman taps the top of a chair. Allura bites her lip, then sits down hesitantly. “Really, it’s alright. My hair is not that bad.”

Merla’s voice is dry. “You haven’t combed it since before the bombs, and if I did not know any better, I would think one of my pet falcons could nest in it.” She threads her fingers lightly into the tangles, searching for Allura’s hair tie in the mess.

The younger woman, embarrassed, rests the bag of chips on her lap and then crunches down in silence.

“Now,” Merla says lightly, her voice sultry and smooth, “I have been very interested in having a girl-talk with you, Allura.”

“You have?”

Merla’s fingers are soft but firm in her hair. “As a matter of fact, yes. You see, Lotor Dalir was once engaged to me. But it seems you two have quite the...connection.”

Allura’s breath stalls. “Oh, dear.” She suddenly feels as if she is in trouble. Merla’s fingers are woven into her hair like a leash. “Um. I, uh, we’re just friends. I apologize if you think that I have been—” Her voice squeaks up into a cry. She’s been sharing her sleeping bag with Lotor every night. They’ve been sharing food.

The woman’s voice lowers for her ears alone. “I don’t think you’re just friends with him, Allura. I think you want to be more. I see it in the way you lean toward him and cling to him on cold nights. Do not lie to me, or to yourself.” Her voice lightens as her fingers loosen in Allura’s hair, having found the mysterious hair tie in the tangle. “You’re a terrible liar anyway. Although a rather good thief, I think.”

Allura squeaks out a noise as she munches on a chip. They had originally been in Lance’s jacket pocket.

Merla begins to lightly run her black-painted fingernails through Allura’s hair. “I want to see you happy,” she says suddenly. “You fed me and protected me when you should have let that man have his way.” Her voice strains. “It’s…what I deserved, probably.”

Allura stills. This is the first time they have spoken at all about Merla’s catatonic state, in the beginning, when the man had targeted her.

“No one deserves that,” Allura whispers.

Merla pats her head, as if she were a precious child.

“How sweet of you to say,” Merla declares airily. “And I know you mean it as well. It is a refreshing thing, Allura, this sort of innocent honesty you have. I see why he likes you back.”

Allura stills.

The woman is lightly running her fingers through Allura’s hair now, sectioning the white locks off to fluff them, taking note on the stiff curl and texture. “Yes. He likes you very much. He tries so desperately not to flirt with you since you’ve both taken up this adorable habit of sleeping together without having sex.”

Even the word _sex_ inspires a new flush on Allura’s face. She falls speechless, stuttering to think of a response—to deny Lotor’s feelings for her. Merla twists her hands into Allura’s hair, holding her in place.

“I feel,” Merla murmurs, “an incredible sense of sexual frustration, watching you both trip over each other. It’s very distressing, Allura.”

“Is it?” the younger woman squeaks.

“Yes. Quite.” She leans in. “Lotor adores you,” she murmurs. “This very moment, he is—I’m sure—flailing about in the rain and washing his hair with that bar of soap he found three days ago. Do you know why he is doing this?”

Allura swallows hard, thinking back to the nurse. “Because he likes to be clean?”

“Because he wants to be. For you.” Merla is now sleekly braiding her hair back. “I think we both know how he came to have that bottle of aspirin you carry in your pocket.”

It falls silent for a time.

“I did not ask him to do that,” Allura whispers. Her brows knit together. “I didn’t even know he—”

“—That is irrelevant. Lotor always does things to degrade himself.” Merla’s voice strains. “I want you to put an end to it. If you love him, then you will not allow him to whore himself out again on your behalf.” Her fingers are soft in Allura’s hair. “The only person I want him sleeping with is you, whenever that happens. If it does. You’re both such nuns at this point, it’s difficult to tell.”

Allura makes another squeaking sound.

Allura’s voice strangles. “Even—um, even if I _wanted_ to….love him….” Her face is beet red. “There’s no, ah, protection. Or privacy.”

Merla huffs. “Do you honestly think anyone in that shelter is going to care at this point about privacy? I have a three-hundred potato chip bet with seven people that you two will fuck by the end of the month.” She leans forward, her voice dropping to a thinly veiled threat. “Don’t make me lose. I like my potato chips, very much.” And then she stuffs something into Allura’s jacket pocket, and it’s a slim, foil-wrapped packet.

Allura freezes, knowing exactly what it is.

"You're welcome, dear," Merla sing-songs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think and if you'd like to see more! Thanks!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing last time:
> 
> MalevoLiss (MissLissa1): Thank you for your ongoing support with this! I love writing Merla, haha. She's such a wild card of a character!
> 
> Bat: Thanks for reviewing! I'm hoping to update main AR soon, but many of these side drabbles were things I already had content for, so I'm hoping to use them in the meantime while I work to update the main story, haha. 
> 
> Espanholina: Ahhh wow thank you for your high praise! And I'm so happy you enjoyed the odd team-ups in this story. I think that's the fun thing about apocalypse stories; the very environment forces a breakdown of previous barriers and emotions, for the sake of survival and other things. Thank you again for your reviews! 
> 
> Wallflwr97: Merla as mvp totally just wrote herself, and I have no regrets about that, LOL. Thank you so much for your reviews and support! 
> 
> Brynn: Guh, bless your heart for your extensive review of this story! I appreciate so much that you can understand the rabbit holing of this, haha. And yeah, Merla's definitely a complicated character, in that she's not someone you'd naturally want to care about, but there's that potential to her? To be good? To be someone better than she is? And I think that's what drives my interest in her. She's definitely got some problems, though, haha. And as far as plot goes, this drabble was written on the fly and is pretty stream-of-consciousness in terms of plot. But I think you'll see apocalypse themes carry through in various ways! Thank you again for reviewing! 
> 
> Paranormally_Normal: Yes, LOL! Merla absolutely did sneak a condom into Allura's pocket. XD Thanks for reading!

It rains hard.

Lotor is standing in the open field of the once-raceway, along with thousands of others. They raise their hands to heaven, feeling cold, free water stream upon them.

Zarkon watches his son with furrowed brows.

Lotor is thinner than before, the several days of tight rationing eating away at his muscles. The lack of personal care has bloomed the rough beginnings of a beard upon his face. His eyes are bagged from struggling to sleep in a large, open area. But his face is split with such a great smile—it lights up his whole being as he raises his face to the sky, closing his eyes.

There is a simple delight in him that Zarkon has not seen since the boy was a child.

Lotor pulls off his ratty shirt in a stiff sweep of cloth, his bones aching from many nights upon a cold dirt floor. In his hand is the sacred bar of soap he found during a scavenge on the edge of the city. He lathers it up against his dirty arm in awe of the sight of suds.

Several others have stripped down fully to wash themselves.

Zarkon tilts a brow and turns away, knowing his son can be quite the exhibitionist.

It leaves Zarkon quiet, to see Lotor so enamored by simple things, when he can recall a time that Lotor had thrown a tantrum over the incorrect shade of blue paint on his newly received supercar.

The man’s heart aches suddenly in want for his wife, who is still safely tucked away in the mountains of Iran. He feels a swelling pride toward Lotor but would not dare to say such to Lotor himself.

“_Look what our son has become,_” he wants to murmur to Honerva.

“_A stinky hobo?_” Honerva would deadpan.

He would chuckle. “_No, my love. A man._”

He imagines Honerva would hum at that, and then lightly flick him. “_You both look like stinky hobos to me. Wash up before you kiss me. I like my men clean._”

It’s somewhere in the middle of his daydream that Zarkon feels a weight dropped into his hand. He blinks out of it, and turns to see Lotor with his white hair full of suds, blue eyes shining hesitantly from his dark face.

He has shared his sacred bar of soap.

Zarkon swallows hard, and his aged face softens at his vain son.

\-----

The rain lasts for several hours.

During that time, Allura nervously looks down at her dirty clothes and her broken arm, which she is not allowed to get wet. A whine of disappointment escapes her as she stares out the entrance to the open sky.

But then she sees a naked couple washing each other nearby, and she blinks, quickly looking away in a flush. The days and days of little privacy have resulted in many shrugging off certain cultural standards. Allura tries not to be bothered by it. She’s seen and heard more in the last week than she had ever imagined. A part of her still thinks that women in the middle of sex sound like they are dying, and that the men sound like animals with their deep, guttural moans.

She looks down at herself, imagining her body naked in the rain, with Lotor’s large palms stroking suds over her breasts like the couple she’d seen in the distance, his hands kneading into her as he grinds his naked hips against hers. Her face fires up a pure red.

She’s never even kissed him yet.

Allura feels dirty thinking of Lotor in such a way—she knows too many desire him for his touch. That he still thinks of the nurse who had whored him out.

She swallows hard and turns away from the entrance, only to run into Merla.

“I am going to bathe,” Merla declares airily, twirling a small bottle of shampoo that one of her followers had picked up for her. In her other hand is a plastic bag and some tape. “Let’s get that arm of yours water-proofed so you can come with me.”

Allura manages another squeak, eyes going wide at the thought of joining the thousands others stripping down before strangers. Among them, Lotor. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really need to—”

“—It’s not for your benefit,” she waves off her concern. “It’s for my own. Broken arm or not, you’re still quite the little bodyguard. Indulge me, won’t you.”

The limbs of a nearby tree—partially blasted to pieces— gather up the rain and create a makeshift stream of water.

Allura stands guard with a metal pipe from the remains of the grandstands, her expression disgruntled as the rain drizzles over her. Her eyes remain planted to the ground, a flush on her face. The pretty braids in her hair are beginning to frizz in the rain, her free strands straggling in odd clumps.

Merla’s voice is a sultry and smooth laugh. “I do not understand,” she says, “why you cannot look up. Do you fear naked people so much?”

Her eyes briefly flicker to Merla, then she looks back down with a twist on her face. Merla is beautiful in ways Allura is not—her skin is pale as the moon, her body delicate like an elf’s. Her hourglass figure is more defined.

Compared to her, Allura feels like a short elephant. She knows her body is stockier, the muscles she’s built in driving dragsters giving her larger calves and an unevenly toned arm. “I don’t fear naked people,” Allura retorts, face flushed. “I just don’t think it’s kind to stare. Is all.”

“How precious you are.” Merla’s voice turns with a light merriment. She sighs as she wrings suds out of her fire hair, turning around to glance at Allura. It’s strange that she feels such a protective wave for the girl. After all Allura has done for her, Merla feels safe enough in her presence to not consider her a threat—even with a lead pipe in her hand.

Something comes over her, and she calls out to the younger woman, “When I am finished here, I will stand guard for you. If you would like to bathe and use this rather marvelous shampoo.”

Allura’s full lips set in an uncomfortable line. There are no walls in nature. But she feels like a living trash can.

She hesitantly nods.

* * *

It’s only a short time later that Allura is awkwardly attempting to undress herself, her face red as her bare feet squish into the earth. She feels that everyone can see her struggle, even though she knows Merla stands guard before her and partially blocks her body from the vision of everyone else.

But as a naked and vulnerable Allura turns around to grab for the bottle of shampoo, she dares to gaze beyond Merla’s back. Her eyes widen as she sees an unmistakable mane of white hair.

Lotor.

In the midst of the crowd, he is leaned over and washing his legs, still naked as the day he was born, his dark skin shining in the rain. His white hair slips over his shoulders, his lithe muscles flexing with every movement.

Allura’s eyes trail along the lines of his waist and lower. Her blush stretches up to the tips of her ears and down her full front as her jaw drops.

He feels her gaze. Suddenly, curious, blue eyes look toward her in the distance.

She gasps and turns around, her fingers shakily gripping the shampoo bottle. “Oh,” she whispers to herself. “This was a bad idea. A bad idea. So very much a bad idea.” Her bare back is toward Lotor now, but she figures that is somehow less embarrassing than her front.

“Something wrong, dear?” Merla’s smooth voice lifts up in a dry way.

“He saw me,” she squeaks out.

Merla’s hand tightens upon the steel pipe in her hand, unsure at first to whom she refers. But then she sees one Lotor Dalir in the crowd, suddenly very intent on washing his arm, his handsome face tilted down with a flush.

And her dark lips stretch into a wicked smile. “Oh, no,” she says mildly. “You’ve managed to embarrass the poor man as well. How cute.”

* * *

The decision to bathe leaves many slightly miserable as they wander about the shelter, wearing wet clothes while the air conditioners blow. Some of the couples shiver together. Allura finds a wet-haired Lotor Dalir sitting in team Voltron’s corner of the underground shelter, with Merla’s old blanket wrapped around him. He still appears haggard in ways he’d never before, with bags under his eyes and rough scruff lining his jaw.

But the instant he hears her soft steps, he looks up with strained eyes, his face still in a flush. “Miss Singh.” His voice has smoothed out as his throat has healed. He swallows. “I am sorry.” His face screws up as he suddenly pulls the blanket off of himself to offer to her as she shivers. “I—I did not know it was you. I did look away, when I realized.”

She stares up at him, a blush of her own still tinging the tips of her ears. She’d known it was him. She hadn’t looked away until he’d caught her. She digs her fingers into the blanket and says nothing, still thinking of the naked lines of his body.

He smells like honey from the bar of soap he’d found. His white brows knit together. “I am trying to be…better,” he says, voice straining hard. “And it has not been difficult because I have been so tired. But today, Miss Singh, I…”

He runs a frazzled hand through his hair. His fingers are long. Allura knows why women talk about men’s fingers now. “I rather had some dirty thoughts about you, love. I am struggling to get them out of my head. If I say something untoward, just jab me.”

He shivers a bit in the cool air as his white hair glimmers.

Allura bites her lip and goes softly, “It’s okay. I, um, had some thoughts too.”

His blue eyes meet hers in a sudden snap.

She quietly squeaks. “I looked first,” she whispers in a stutter. “I’m sorry, But…I think you’re pretty.” She knows he has many eyes on him at all times.

Instead of teasing her or growing indignant, he pauses. “You would call me pretty?” he repeats, voice incredulous and rising in a mix of awe and amusement. Of all the words she could use.

_Pretty._

It still makes his heart skip.

* * *

That night, Merla notices something strange. She is dreaming away initially, but the slightest sound awakens her. She blearily sits up, instinctively grabbing for a pipe she’d brought down with her as a weapon.

And then she freezes.

Lotor is lying on the ground with one Allura Singh sitting on top of him, his hand cradling her neck as they kiss soft and slowly. The sleeping bag tossed over them as a blanket covers their bodies. Her curly white hair blends in with his.

They are otherwise still, with Allura’s injured arm cradled between them as he holds her to him.

Merla blinks at the sight, which is innocent but leaves her feeling a strange emotion. She has walked in on people in the middle of sex and felt less intrusive than she does in that moment.

The sound she hears is a soft giggle from Allura, and a resounding murmur from Lotor.

Lotor stares up at Allura as if she were a universe. He strokes her clean cheek in a reverent way, humbled. He brushes his thumb over the full of her lips, stroking her like the petals of a flower.

Merla swallows hard, even as her heart rises that she might in fact still win her various bets. She quietly lays back down and tries to force herself to sleep, in hopes that she can sleep through their soft explorations without gagging in a tease at them, or alternatively smashing them together once and for all.

Her black fingernails clench into her sleeping bag with an awe at the image of Lotor’s face.

Beneath Allura Singh, he looks like a rising sun. Glowing.

* * *

The next morning, Merla sees Lotor is still asleep, cradling Allura against him. The sleeping bag has shifted in their sleep, revealing the both of them to be still fully clothed. They simply cling to each other. Lotor’s face is soft in peace. His white hair halos out from him in rays, the scruff of his white beard catching the emergency lights in glimmers.

Allura has one hand cradled against his jaw, as if in interest of his scruff. She murmurs on occasion in her sleep—unintelligible words. Her curls seep like rivers against the straighter rays of Lotor’s hair, and if this is not an image of love, then Merla does not know what love is.

But the woman knows the moment will not last long. The emergency aid workers will brighten the lights soon and awaken them all for their granola bar breakfast.

Before she turns away, she notices Allura shivers in her sleep.

The girl shifts a bit uncomfortably to burrow deeper against Lotor.

* * *

Soon, when Allura opens her bleary eyes, they are a little too bright. And her face and mouth are flushed, this time with fever.

As more people awaken, it is clear that the rains and cold air and cramped living conditions have resulted in a spread of illness. Lotor awakens, the soft peace from him quickly steeling to concern as he lifts up on his elbow, planting a hand against Allura’s flushed cheek. He cradles over her protectively, murmuring questions.

Her voice is soft and hitched. She chills against him, and he pulls her to him with a strong arm to support her. Tucked away in her jacket pocket is the sacred bottle of aspirin. It is still three-fourths full. Lotor’s worried eyes scan the corridors, seeing the beginnings of an outbreak in the faces of several other bleary survivors.

He swallows hard. He feels an ache in his bones and knows he is not far behind himself, but he does not know if he imparted sickness upon Allura, or if she had spread it to him. A fear suggests perhaps he had given it to her. He usually ruins everything he touches.

“I’m okay,” she murmurs tiredly against him, voice muffled against his shirt. “I’m just…feeling sluggish.”

Lotor runs his fingers down her hair, stroking the back of her neck with his thumb. She is too precious to him. Illnesses of any sort are dangerous for the reason that medications are scarce. Their food has been lacking vital nutrients. Their sleep is often interrupted.

But in that moment, he is thankful for what he has done to secure medication for her, which he knows can keep a fever down if her sickness gets worse.

As she exhaustedly leans against him, Lotor realizes there is nothing he would not do for her. He’d sell himself another thousand times if it means saving her from pain.

She mumbles against him, “I don’t want to get you sick.”

Instead of releasing her, he simply pulls her closer. “Probably a bit late for that, love,” he murmurs in a miserable amusement. He kisses the top of her head.

Her lips stretch tiredly.

* * *

Merla watches as Allura Singh’s glow dampens under sneezes and a cough, her vitality flushing into a red that leaves her exhausted beneath the blankets.

Lotor offers his water bottle when hers runs out. He strokes her hair as he mindlessly eats his granola bar for breakfast. But soon his movements grow sluggish as well, and he falls beneath the sleeping bag in a puff of his white hair.

“You two,” Merla deadpans, “are pathetic.” She kneels down beside them and sets new water bottles at their side, her full lips in a tight line. Team Voltron—Allura and Lotor—are the only remaining family she has. She carefully brushes aside their increasingly sweaty hair, feeling their foreheads.

Off to the side, one Keith Kogane sits against the wall. He’s working to sharpen a long stick for spearing fish. The silver of his switchblade gleams in the light as he works. “Don’t worry about them,” he says, flickering his dark eyes up to Merla. “They’ll be okay.”

She turns to the boy, who looks terribly more like a man now that he cannot shave either. His sharp face is sprouting a beard. She’d believed Keith to be a mute. It is strange to hear a voice from him.

“I’m not worried,” she retorts.

“…You’re worried,” he says, then looks back down with a shrug as he continues to work. He uses the blade in a way that suggests he knows weapons. Another surprise from Keith Kogane.

Merla feels a strange emotion rise in her. She looks back down at the ill Allura and Lotor, who have fallen into brow-scrunched, discomforted sleep, likely out of pure exhaustion. Now that she has seen them glowing, it does not feel right to see them as anything less. _Worried?_ she thinks. She cannot remember the last time she worried for anyone besides herself. She swallows hard.

The damn apocalypse must be making her soft.

* * *

Emergency aid workers begin a quarantine process, blocking off various corridors for the sick to better ensure they can be treated while the healthy are less exposed.

Allura Singh and Lotor Dalir find themselves trudging through a corridor, their blanket and sleeping bag dragging from their sweaty palms. They are the only ones from team Voltron or Sincline LLC who have fallen ill. Lotor worries it is entirely his fault—he has always been slightly immunocompromised from his chronic quintessence illness. By kissing Allura, perhaps he had infected her.

“Oh, hush,” she murmurs tiredly, giving him a light jab to the ribs. “If you blame yourself one more time, I will trip you.”

Lotor turns bleary, reddish eyes to her. His head is pounding with a headache, his handsome face flushed with fever. But he manages a merry twitch of his lips. “How cruel you are to me,” he declares, voice weak. “Love, would you truly trip me?”

Her flushed face turns up to his. “No,” she whispers. But a mischievous glint works into her too-bright eyes. “But I might fall on you.”

“Oh.” They are still trudging forward. Lotor’s sickness-addled mind struggles to follow her humor. He throws his blanket over his shoulder and holds out his hands, as if to catch her. “Fall into my arms then, Miss Singh. I will catch you gladly.”

His voice is hoarse with every additional word he speaks. His flirtations make her giggle, even as they shuffle along, miserable.

She reaches out with her good arm to grab for his hand. He is warm, too-warm like her, but his large palm and fingers are familiar to her now. “Well, if I had to get sick,” she says, “at least it is with you.”

The man searches her eyes for a time, his brows knitting together.

He realizes this is Allura Singh’s way of flirting.

His exhausted lips stretch wide with a smile of delight.

The two of them fairly collapse into the quarantine corridor in a flurry of white hair and blankets. Lotor leans back against the wall and opens his arms again. Allura falls against him, leaning her cheek into his chest. He still smells of honey from the previous day’s bathing out in the rain, but she sniffles, her nose twitching from her cold.

He wraps their sleeping bag around them both and closes his eyes. In his thoughts, he has visions of making love to Allura Singh, but he is too exhausted for the effort. He instead settles for running circles over her back, beneath the sleeping bag.

He feels her lips twitch in delight of the touch.

A warmth spreads through him—that somehow, he is still enough for her, even as a sick and penniless man.

* * *

With Allura and Lotor separated from the group, it leaves Merla alone with strangers.

She knows Team Voltron by name but has rarely spoken to any of them. She feels out of sorts and disconnected once again. She longs to organize another scavenge for supplies in the aboveground world—to command people. To be in control.

Sickness has a way of reminding her that she cannot control everything.

She sits in the corner of the shelter atop her sleeping bag, picking mindlessly at the remains of black nail polish on her hands. To her right still rests the steel pipe she’d grabbed as a makeshift bludgeon.

She hears Keith Kogane’s voice again. He has a dry mid-tone of a voice, but it lifts up in curiosity. “You ever had to use that?”

Her dark eyes slide to him. “Not yet,” she says, but there is a warning in her voice. She does not remember that Keith was one of three who stood in front of her as a guard while she shivered in shock. The several hours after the first attack are still such a blur to her.

But when she thinks hard, she still hears the crunch of Allura Singh’s arm in the middle of a fight.

Keith’s lips press into a line. He pulls out from his pocket a second switchblade and discreetly slides it over to her. “Just in case,” he says.

Merla stares down at the switchblade with a quirked brow. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” she retorts.

Keith’s voice strains. “You…use it. You know, if you have to.” His eyes flicker to the corridor sides. “Some people are weird here.” He has a strange expression on his face, as if he wishes to say more but decides against it. “You just push the top, and the blade comes out.”

Her red brows knit together in irritation. “Why do you care.”

The man swallows back words. It seems he is almost in pain when he says, “You’re…pretty. A lot of guys are looking for pretty girls right now.” He hesitates before he adds, “And one of us might not always be there. So, you should be prepared.”

The pragmatic way he compliments her beauty leaves her blinking for a moment.

She discovers her tongue is tied as a noise strangles from her mouth. “I don’t know how to use a blade,” she eventually says. Her voice loses its sultry tone, simply out of surprise. “I am more a danger to myself with this.”

Keith, who so rarely shows emotion, begins to smile. It’s the slightest twitch of his lip and a small glimmer in his eye. “It’s not hard. I can show you.”

* * *

Allura sneezes into Lotor’s shirt. It’s a soft, high-pitched sound that makes her whine pathetically afterward. Her temples are a beaded mess of sweat now. Her broken arm throbs along with the rest of her body.

Around them, several others are coughing and sneezing. Lotor’s blue, glassy eyes stare up at the ceiling in a daze as he strokes Allura’s curly, frizzed hair. It is strange for him to think of his life just days prior, where he was lying on a plush bed, his future secured by billions of dollars, his latest schematics already on their way to the lawyers for them to secure patents. It feels like lifetimes ago.

Allura chills against him, the two of them stiff and sore from lying on the ground. The blanket they rest upon does little to ward off the cold seeping in through the dirt. Between them is a sacred item from a recent raid on a city grocery store—a kid’s vitamin C juice box. It’s in the middle of his misery that Lotor begins to laugh. It is a dry, hoarse sound, and it is just as genuine as it is slightly hysterical.

“Juice box,” he manages to rasp out.

Allura weakly pulls away from him in concern.

His blue eyes land upon her as his face cracks. “I had a 1947 Cheval Blanc in my wine cellar in Dubai.” His voice breaks with an odd chuckle. “And here I am with a twenty-cent juice box.”

The woman blinks for a second before she realizes that neither of them have actively mourned for their lost riches and empires. His precious wines are buried and shattered beneath rubble, likely dried upon the scorched ground by now. “Maybe the earth enjoyed it,” she strangles out.

Lotor Dalir stares at her for a time before his somewhat hysteric huff of amusement turns to a full chuckle. He strokes her sweaty cheek. “I hope it did.”

Lotor dares to allow himself to think of the wife, and his favorite earring, and all of his cars, and a pain curls deep into his collarbones. Before he realizes it, his eyes are burning. He tries to blink away the tears because he knows they are useless.

He had loved his bike. His livelihood.

“Are you alright?” Allura whispers.

He swallows hard. “I’ll be fine.” His voice has roughened with emotion.

Allura’s brows knit, and she awkwardly moves up and kisses his sweaty, flushed cheek in some attempt at comforting affection.

The action breaks him. The great Lotor Dalir inhales shakily before he grabs onto her as tightly as he can, his long fingers curling into the material of her shirt. He feels sick in more ways than one, knowing that some mourn their lost or dead relatives while he mourns the loss of material things.

All the millions of dollars he’d spent on fast women and strangers—and now he has only meager offerings to provide to Allura Singh. Scraps from scavenges. Himself, if she wanted him.

She is all Lotor has now, besides his friends and family.

“It’s okay,” Allura murmurs in a slur of exhaustion to him. “We’ll probably—find wine somehow. Or we could make it.” Her lips raise in a lazy way. “You’d—stomp grapes.”

Her fever is climbing.

He tries to distract himself by reaching into her pocket and pulling out the bottle of aspirin. It has been several hours since she’d last taken anything. Beneath the sleeping bag, their stash remains a secret. “These are not meant for wine anyway,” he murmurs to her, trying to brush off his moment of weakness. He sniffs, and the sound blends in with the other noises of sickness around them. His eyes might have passed simply for a symptom of his cold, instead of red from tears.

Lotor gently presses two tablets against Allura’s cracked, dry lips.

The medicine is not expensive chocolate. They are not surrounded by silk robes and Egyptian cotton, lying in a decadent hotel. He cannot make love to her like this, and she is in no condition to think of it either.

But somehow, as Allura trustingly opens her mouth to receive the tablets, he finds himself humbled by the privilege of taking care of her. It makes his own fever seem somehow less painful, knowing that he is not entirely a worthless pretty boy.

He thinks Allura might even enjoy his attention, based on the way she leans into him and how her lips gently press against his fingers in thanks, hesitant and innocent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still working on the next chapter of AR, but I realized I had this sitting on my computer and might as well publish it! Please let me know your thoughts and if you'd like to see more!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing last time:
> 
> Lunar Magnolia: Bless that awkward turtle man! And bless you for reviewing! <3 
> 
> Rumo_writes: Ahh, thankie for your very kind words and for your review! 
> 
> Asennnaa: Thanks for your review! I really love kinda tormenting poor Dalingh haha. And Merla kinda just writes herself in this story; it'll be interesting to see what happens with her and Keith, and with this strange soul she's kinda growing all of a sudden! Thanks again! 
> 
> mutedtempest: Bless your heart for giving this story a chance. I can totally understand avoiding AR if it brings up unwanted trauma, so I appreciate your bravery in checking out this AR-AU story! And ahhhh Some Things Are Just Gifts is my fav lotura story too! I can't resist a good survival story, haha. Thanks again!
> 
> Wallflwr97: As always, thank you so much for your support on my stories! Couples who get sick together stick together LOL. About that privacy for Lotura tho… *waggles brows* I hope you'll enjoy this next chapter! 
> 
> JeanFi: Lol bless you, your review made me giggle. In sickness and health, indeed! I'm so happy you're enjoying all the interactions in this story! 
> 
> Bat: Yoo, I still gotta write that cute kitty into this story somewhere... Thanks for the review !

Zarkon is watching Lotor and Allura. He has fallen ill, like them and many around them. The sickness has forced him from the bedside of a healing Acxa to the quarantined corridor. He naturally blames Lotor for sharing his bar of soap, and then he only slightly blames himself for accepting the soap. Lotor often is sick. He should have known to stay away in such dire times.

He is huddled beneath his sleeping bag, his broad form shivering despite his every attempt to remain still.

He distracts himself by looking down the corridor to his son.

Lotor is stroking Allura Singh’s hair as he stares up at the ceiling, coughing weakly. They both seem limp in exhaustion, their illness wearing hard on them.

His son looks older in the hardship, the scruff on his face masking the young, sharp lines of his jaw. He is heavily disheveled, his face lit hot with fever. And yet Lotor expresses more worry for Miss Singh than for himself, occasionally readjusting the sleeping bag around her and then pulling her closer. The woman in his arms stretches out only a few times, yawning. She pats his face to feel his fever before curling back down around him.

Zarkon’s eyes hone in on the dirtied cast around Allura Singh’s arm.

He’s heard stories.

His lips press together tightly in a begrudging respect—and a worry that Lotor has become terribly, unmistakably attached to one Allura Singh, for too many good reasons.

* * *

"Lotor?"   
  
His voice is hoarse in response. "Yes, love?" 

Allura blearily stares at the ground and their crumpled sleeping bag. Her heavy cheek leans against his chest. His heartbeat is a stressed thud, sluggish like the rest of him. “Are we going to die like this?” she whispers. “I feel as though I could.”

A too-warm hand slides over her back. Lotor’s fever has risen high, his lowered immune system desperately attempting to fight off infection. He rubs her back, his movements unsteady. He chills often, hard enough to tremble them both. “You will not die,” he promises. “Self-fulfilling prophecy—you will live.”

She’s too exhausted to care that her nose is running, or that her own snot is starting to stain his t-shirt. She sniffles. Some part of it is related to the burning well of tears in her eyes.

Lotor shivers through another chill, his arms weakly locking up, his skin goose-bumping hard even with their sleeping bag and Allura’s body heat. “W-we’ll be just fine,” he whispers, his voice unsteady. “Simply a f-flu.”

But there are no hospitals, no comforting beds or endless supplies of tea and vitamins. The raids into the Olkari City ruins turn up odds and ends. The air filtration system has been shut off to the quarantined hallway, to prevent air-borne illness from infecting others.

Sometimes, it hurts just to breathe. The air is heavy with sickness, and her nerves ache with every exhale.

Allura blinks, and tears slide down her flushed cheeks. She is genuinely terrified to die—to think that her life may be cut short in such a way, her father’s trophy forever out of reach, her friends dying just like herself—

The only comfort is being in Lotor’s arms.

“If we make it,” she whispers softly, “I think we should celebrate.”

The man she lays against is no longer worthy of a magazine cover—his hair greasy and face sallow. His eyes are too bright and too dull at the same time, even as he shudders through another weary chill. “How so?”

It takes all the energy she has to say, "Maybe some more kissing?" 

Lotor’s blue eyes narrow upon it curiously, attempting to see through the general blur of sickness.

For all the exhaustion in him, his cracked lips twitch. “Surely I am dying,” he whispers airily, his voice a vibration against her curls, “for I hear you saying you _want_ physical affection." 

Allura sniffles cutely, daring to tilt her head up to look at him. She curls fingers somewhat protectively around the little packet in her pocket, looking scared. Her eyes water hard. “Do you not…like the idea?”

Lotor pulls back slightly to eye her. He is in the middle of another chill, leaving him weak. But there is deep fondness that sparks in his eyes. “I like th-the way you think, love.” It is all he can do to hold himself up. He eventually leans his head back, his white locks streaming down an increasingly emaciated shoulder. He closes his eyes, knitting his brows together.

And even so, he manages to shakily brush away her tears with his calloused thumb, the action soft and loving, and it inspires the first real smile on her face for that day. She rather lovingly wipes her nose on his shirt because she has no energy to move further. 

Lotor huffs out an amused chuckle.

* * *

Several days pass.

The sick begin to brighten with health over time. Lotor’s returning energy offers him more of a flirtatious air and a beginning whine for a razor to shave his face. He complains often he feels sticky and scratchy.

Allura still cradles her broken arm close to her, but she begins to fret over her hair and jabs Lotor when he says something too flirtatious for her liking.

The two are touching more. If they are not holding hands, then their legs are brushing up against one another. There is something different about the way they touch. It is not simply a flirt or a typical honeymoon stage in a relationship. The two know the world has ended. Everything is difficult, and they are physically miserable more often than not.

But they are miserable together, finding humor in the small things. In each other.

That’s why eventually they find themselves in the generator room after being cleared to return to the main shelter corridors. Their sleeping bag and blanket are crumpled on the floor. Allura’s fingers are woven into his dirty hair, her fever and his broken but both of their faces flushed.

Lotor moans into their kiss, his brows knitting together fervently as grabs onto her hips. The generators are loud. They churn with a low thrum that shakes the floor beneath them. He breaks from her, his exhausted eyes tight with need.

“Allura.” His fingers slide along the swell of her body and the width of her hips. His hands do the opposite of what his mind is screaming. “We—we cannot—”

Allura stares up at him in great pain. “Why?”

Lotor flushes in shame. He’d used the last condom he had in his pocket on that nurse, days and days before. Many couples those first nights made love without protection, thinking the world was ending. Lotor has more hope that a future exists, even if it is not an ideal one. He swallows hard. “It…ah, might be unlikely, just once—but it is still possible, love.”

He strokes her hips, thinking of her body swelling with a child.

A part of him likes the idea, of a family with Allura Singh. Most of him wants to slap that side of him silly—he knows better than to get a girl pregnant during the apocalypse.

Allura’s face is tinged red as she searches his gaze, knowing to what he refers. Hesitantly, she pulls a foil-lined packet from her jacket pocket. Her innocent fingers uncurl from it, raising it up to him. “Um,” she whispers. “I’ve been saving this. But I don’t know if we should…wait. With everything that could still go wrong…”

Lotor stares at her for a second or two. He is not going to question how Allura Singh of all people came to have a condom in her pocket. He leans back down and desperately captures her lips with his, pulling her to him. Her lips stretch in delight.

They take it slow. Allura’s never had sex, and they have enough protection to make love only once. Lotor wants to make it count, despite the dank conditions of the generator room, and the loud generators themselves, and Allura’s broken arm, and how they are both grimy from days of sickness.

He estimates they have several minutes before team Voltron notices they are missing from the returning crowds.

Time is ticking. This is their first time and last time for a long while.

Allura leans her head back against his shoulder, closing her eyes as his fingers unbutton her pants, dragging the zipper down as he kisses her temple.

“Are you alright, love?” he murmurs.

Her voice is breathless. “Yes.” She bites her lip and squeezes her eyes shut in awe as she feels the alien sensation of a man’s fingers sliding down her lower abdomen to lightly cup her between her legs. Already, she feels an increasing burn there.

He gently pushes his fingers up, and she gasps, a noise of delight escaping her. He is making the burn between her legs worse. Her blush stretches up to the tips of her ears as she leans against him fully, trusting and curious of what sex with Lotor Dalir could feel like. “I hope we, um, have enough time.”

His velvet voice is soft in her ear against the generators and the echoes of shouts and voices from the hallway. “We do.” His nimble fingers stroke her softly. He hooks his arm underneath her broken elbow to avoid hurting her. “Relax, darling.”

She closes her eyes, simply feeling sensation, resting her broken limb against him. Her sweaty hair is a tumble down his shoulder. Her lips still tingle from their kisses, and she blushes at the realization that the burn between her legs is deepening. She wants his fingers to move deeper. Faster.

On instinct, she lightly moves with him, her breath quickening. She can feel his own elevated heartbeat beneath her ear.

His lips brush against the sensitive shell of her ear. “Do you like this?”

Allura’s legs feel weak in desire to spread for him, or to clamp down tight to hold his hand to her. She feels dizzy all over again as the infamous Lotor Dalir cradles her, his large palm resting over her womb as he slips his long fingers along the lines of her body. Only the thin cloth of her panties separate him from her, and it’s at that point she realizes how wet she is from the odd sensation of the generator’s cool air against her front. She squeaks out a noise of embarrassment and desire at the squelch of his fingers, rocking into her like a tide against a beach.

She remembers then that he’s a mechanic above all else, his fingers carrying a muscle memory. An intelligence. He doesn’t force parts together, but works to slide fittings together just right—

“—Ah,” she whispers, her sweet alto voice tightening. “Yes.” She allows herself to move against his fingers. She can feel a tension now that expands all through her pelvis and lights her mind into something airy and white. Thoughts are fragmenting into want for even just his fingers. 

Or more.

He leans them both against the wall as he moves against her, more firmly stroking her now. She’s wet against his hand, her body primed for making love. He rewards her desire for him with a kiss to her temple. And he sets his pace faster, closing his eyes to focus on her pleasure. He wants nothing more than to make Allura Singh writhe in ecstasy.

His other hand slips beneath her shirt, moving to stretch over her ribs and to feel her form. His palm is warm and calloused. She makes a noise of delight, not quite realizing that she wanted to him to touch her in other places as well. Her face flushes as his hand climbs higher, slipping beneath her sports bra.

Lotor’s breath hitches along with hers as they meld together closer in desire for the other.

By now, her inner thighs are slick, her breasts arched up for his touch as they move together in the dark room. His breath puffs against her as she feels the strain of the tendons in his hands, and in the increasing pressure of his desire against her lower back.

Allura is soon gasping against him, her one good hand hooked onto his flexing wrist for dear life. A blush of pleasure is upon her as she jerks against his hand more desperately, pulling on him in silent demand for more. For something deeper. Even like this, an innocent giggle escapes her in the middle of a whine. She feels obscene and safe to be obscene with him. The burn between her legs is fizzling her with need.

She feels his sharp cheek stretch in delight with her. “Do you want more, love?”

“Do not tease me,” she begs, voice weak as she leans back against him, allowing her body to move fully with his.

“But teasing is half the fun,” he murmurs lightly. His voice is rough with his own need for her.

Just as he begins to follow her demands, his fingers slipping past soaked cloth to stroke the silk of her bare body, Allura whines in delight, squeezing her eyes shut. Her body shudders.

And the door to the room slams open.

Allura’s eyes fly wide open, and she flinches in Lotor’s arms. She stares in horror as a large, dark shadow enters and flips on the lights. Lotor’s hand freezes upon her breast, his other hand still buried between her legs, hiding her from the intruder.

One Zarkon Dalir stares back, his usually stoic expression slipping from his face to fall into a slaw-jacked horror and surprise. A noise strangles from him, as if to demand an answer for their actions. He suddenly looks ill as he turns his face away. Then, body tense, he slams the door shut hard enough to splinter wood.

Allura is still heaving for breath in Lotor’s arms, and he is breathless against her as well. The two of them are frozen together.

The generators thrum in an ongoing roar, as if laughing.

Embarrassment threads through Allura as she tenses even more in horror. Lotor’s white brows knit together in utter defeat as he groans, the moment destroyed. “Of _all the times to check on the generator,_” he hisses in pained irritation, his hands slipping away from Allura. “Why. Why.”

Allura shakily pulls away from him as well, disturbed by the obscene sound of his wet fingers as he’d moved from her. She looks down at her unbuttoned pants and feels strange. The cold air burns her as she stares up at Lotor, lips pressed tightly together.

His face is flushed as red as her own.

“M-maybe,” she whispers in pain, “it wasn’t the right time.” She still burns for him between her legs. A very small part of her dares to grab him and keep going no matter who walks through the door next.

Lotor’s hands tremble in loss and miserable amusement. “Maybe it wasn’t.” His voice breaks. “But I do not know where else we can go for privacy here.”

She swallows hard. “Perhaps, outside?”

Her thighs are still trembling to a rhythm from his hands.

He licks his lips and shakes his head. “The animals roam at night. It is not safe.”

And his heart breaks as he sees the beautiful Allura Singh pout, her big eyes wide with tears at the loss of their chance—their one chance to make love undisturbed.

* * *

A tight-lipped and uncomfortable Allura Singh and Lotor Dalir return to their group, shuffling along. Allura cannot stare at him in the eyes, her lips pursed in a quiver of loss and irritation. She has never been denied anything she truly wanted. This is an all-new level of deprivation, to feel her body slick for Lotor Dalir—and to not have him.

“We will figure it out, love,” he murmurs to her before they arrive at the corner of the shelter where Team Voltron and Sincline LLC have congregated. He swallows hard, afraid that somehow, he’s lost her.

Allura Singh is skittish. Bad experiences could deter from ever trying to love him again.

He wants to wring his father’s thick neck.

Lucky that the old man had made himself scarce. Lotor hopes he’s scarred for life.

* * *

As they appear to their team, one Merla Falconieri looks up from them, a sharp switchblade in her hand. She has a bent tree limb in hand, and she is carving off the bark. It is the beginning of a bow for hunting based off Keith Kogane's guidance, and she is just waiting to show off her crude handiwork. But the triumphant gaze upon her face suddenly turns to puzzled curiosity at the obvious tension between Allura and Lotor, and the uncomfortable lines of their body.

Her dark eyes watch them, roving over the wrinkles in their clothes and the way Allura walks strangely.

Allura catches her eye for a moment and then ashamedly looks away.

Merla’s hand tightens on the bow, and she turns her gaze to Lotor with an increasingly concerned expression.

For the first time, not even he can hold her gaze, and he looks away, a twist of loss in his face.

* * *

Allura is in agony. She knows the feeling of pleasure now but can’t obtain. Every time she looks at Lotor, she feels his body against hers and the burn of his fingers stroking her between her legs. Her full lips are pressed together in a permanent, unhappy pout. She did not think she could be this miserable for any reason.

How could it possibly be this difficult to lose her virginity in an apocalypse?

She pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around herself, still uncomfortably wet for him and face flushed hard in shame.

Merla leans in, setting down her makeshift bow. Her red braid shifts down her shoulder as she murmurs, “What happened?” Her voice is smooth but carries a sharp tone that demands explanation. “Did he hurt you?” Merla has loyalties to Lotor, but Lotor has never fought for her honor as Allura has. She would most certainly injure Lotor on Allura’s behalf. She spins the switchblade in her hand.

Allura turns to her, eyes wide. “What? Oh. Oh, no.” Her face flushes, and she lowers her voice to a tight whisper. “We were…um, trying to…you know.” Her voice strains. “But we got caught. By his _father._”

Merla blinks, and she raises a red brow. Her hand pauses on her switchblade. And then she suddenly laughs, and it’s a bell-like sound. “Oh, how unfortunate.”

* * *

Lotor and Allura are hesitant with each other in ways they had not been for a long while. When the emergency lights dim that night, Allura toys with the edge of the sleeping bag, her face flushed. Lotor worries she might not want him, and so he waits for her to offer to share.

“Um,” she whispers. “Do you…want to?”

His eyes slide to her, strained. He slowly nods. The two of them settle in with a large space between them, the tension thick.

Per the norm, there is always the echo of one couple or another making love in some corner.

Allura’s face burns as she tightens her legs together. The sounds no longer terrify or disgust her but raise a deep need within herself. Her breath hitches. She feels the ache. She wants to be the woman with the voice hitching out a _yes—yes—yes—_

Her brows knit as she daydreams. Her hand slips down to the button of her pants.

Lotor turns over in huff, his white hair flaring out. “Allura,” he whispers in a moan. “I can almost _hear_ your thoughts.”

She turns to him, thankful that the sleeping bag is thick enough to hide that her hand is between her aching legs. Her eyes are wide and tight with pain. “I’m not trying to broadcast anything,” she whines back to him.

The two of them stare at each other—so close but so far. Lotor’s lips press together tightly, and he scoots closer to her, reaching out to her beneath their shared sleeping bag, his nose nuzzling into the loose curls of her hair.

She gasps as she feels his long fingers quest for her body, sliding over her own hand.

It is scandalous. They are only feet away from their friends and colleagues.

But she does not stop him.

Allura covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes widening as she suppresses a moan of deep want, her body already burning for Lotor. A daze overwhelms her. They’re in the middle of a vast shelter with twenty-seven-thousand people crammed together.

Some distant neighbors are complaining about the several couples already fucking. People are growing tired of having to cover their children’s ears or pull pillows over their own heads to drown out the noise. It makes a thrill of danger spark up her spine.

Allura feels Lotor unbutton her pants with his one hand and slip fingers against the intimate, wet curls over her womanhood, stroking her in a silent confession of his desire for her. She grows wet for him, expecting the soft brush of his fingers against her. But instead, he soundly pulls her panties to the side and thrusts his longest finger into her. She makes a strangled noise of rapture in the back of her throat.

“Shh, love.” His whisper is rough against her ear. He presses warm lips against the back of her neck, tasting the salt of her skin. Something is absolutely devious within him as he feels her desperately clench around him. He knows she wants him. Bad.

Bad enough to sin for it.

Her breath hitches, her face flaming hard. But instead of pulling away, she arches against him. The scandal, the roughness of his hand—it leaves her vision searing white, her full lips dropping open in a silent gasp. The force of his movement makes her clothed body jerk in time with his rhythm.

Lotor slips a second finger into her weeping sex, and he raises up to capture her lips, to swallow her cry of joy that would most certainly wake up their friends. Her breath puffs against him. She breaks away to arch against him—to increase the friction.

But it takes every ounce of self-control to temper her breathing and remain silent. The challenge leaves her in an overwhelmed daze.

The only visible proof of his manipulations includes a rhythmic rustle of their sleeping bag, the silent jerking of Allura Singh’s body, and the bounce of her curls.

Eventually, a soft keen finally—_finally_—escapes her as she feels a release sweep through her desperate body. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, all! Please let me know what you think and if you'd like to see more! Thanks for reading! <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following awesome people for reviewing last time: 
> 
> LunarMagnolia: “Protect the princess, avenge the baby” is the most valid thing ever, haha. And yaas, poor zarkturtle will have to live with the consequence of his action. Thank you so much for your reviews!! I really appreciate it! 
> 
> Bat: Ahh, I’m so glad you enjoyed this last chapter, and I hope you’re doing well too! 
> 
> Espanholina: Yaaas, omg I cannot imagine how horrifying that would be to get interrupted during an intimate moment like that, haha. To answer your question, Zarkon knows that Allura did in fact save Merla. But I don’t believe he is aware of what Lotor did to help Allura obtain some aspirin for her broken arm. As always, thank you so much for reviewing! 
> 
> Asennnaa: Oof, you read it 10 times? Bless you, haha. Zarkon Dalir: the ultimate birth control a;jsf;lasjf. And yayy I’m so happy you liked this last chapter! I hope you like this next one too! 
> 
> Wallflwr97: Bless you for reviewing!! And lollol, I hope you’ve cooled down by now. XD Thank you so much for your review! 
> 
> JeanFi: Ooooh, you bring up a good point! Maybe Alfor has walked in on Zarkon and Honerva once, haha. Thank you for reviewing!!

Time passes. Many come to know that Lotor Dalir and Allura Singh are seeing each other.

Everyone side-eyes the way that the two hold hands and eat off each other’s plates without asking questions. Lotor and Allura seem to speak without talking. They often touch each other, even in front of strangers—like Lotor brushing his knuckles against Allura’s cheek, and Allura reaching up to rub Lotor’s scruffy face.

He makes a face at her when she squishes his cheek, but he still stoops down and allows her to pet him.

“Why such interest with facial hair?” he mourns.

Allura hums. “Oh, I think it’s rather handsome. Like starlight on your face.” She rubs his growing beard. “And it’s softening too.”

Lotor knits his brows together, appearing as a suffering saint. “I feel as though I am growing an animal on my face. And now you pet me as one.”

“Well, sir. You are a bit of an animal, and don’t try to deny it.” She pulls away, patting his cheek.

The man gives her a look. But his eyes dance. “I’m not the only animal here.”

Even with her broken arm still in a cast, Allura looks utterly devious. She bites her lip, her big eyes merry and wide. “Are you talking about my leg hair, sir?” She bends down a bit stiffly, holding her arm close to her as she began to roll up her pant. “It’s grown quite a bit as well—I’d be almost proud of it if I weren’t slightly disgusted.”

Lotor laughs. It’s a bell of a sound, his whole face lighting up. “Oh, love. There is nothing upon you that I would ever call disgusting.”

Allura’s brow angles up. She models her unshaven leg, inspecting it curiously. “I’m beginning to feel very uncivilized, nonetheless.”

“Aren’t we all.” The man leans against the wall then, eyeing her fondly. His wide lips stretch, revealing a hint of his too-sharp canines. His fingers tick against his side. His heart swells at even the sight of her. All of this, he thinks, is precious. Every moment is a gift in this strange, altered world.

Allura awkwardly tries to roll her pant leg down, her face flushing. “You know, I had visions of being, well, presentable, when I began to date.” But at this point in their relationship, she has spread her legs for his fingers and has arched her breasts into his hands. Lotor has lain beside her beneath their shared sleeping bag, burrowing his nose into her dirty hair.

She wonders what it could have been like, if they’d fallen in love before the world ended.

Lotor’s head tilts. “What is natural is never unpresentable.”

She quirks a brow at that. “Then why do you whine so terribly over your beard?”

His lips purse. His cheeks heat up in a strange way, and he reaches up and scratches his scruff, which catches the light. “Ah, it itches.” The words strangle from him in a moan. “Especially when I think about it.”

Allura giggles. She bites her lip, then straightens up. Even standing at her tallest, she is quite short compared to him. The outline of her body fits well within the broadness of his shoulders.

Lotor looks down at her, his wild hair straggling against his cheeks.

She hesitates, then dares to twist her fingers into the belt loop on his pants. She is still acclimating to the ownership she has over the mind and body of Lotor Dalir. That he is utterly hers, and that even now, his eyes light up in delight of her—“Can I do anything to help?”

He pouts at her. “Distract me, love. Please. For I am a man of great suffering.”

She lovingly rolls her eyes, then stands up on her tip-toes. “Lean down here so I can kiss you, then. You’re very tall, you know.”

He does not need further invitation. He leans down, capturing her lips in a swoop of need. His mind sparks to white, the sensation buzzing through him fully.

Allura makes a noise of happiness against him, her fingers weakly tightening into his belt loop to pull him closer.

It’s around then that one Zethrid Lebna walks by, carrying supplies. “Oh, god,” she complains loudly. “Get a room.”

Lotor stretches Allura’s lips open, deepening the kiss and inspiring an unholy moan from little miss Allura Singh herself. His hands are beginning to wander upon her—

Zethrid continues walking, her face a deadpan. “Or totally ignore me and all the chores that have to be done, that’s cool too.”

That does it. Lotor pulls away from Allura, setting his forehead against her own, his fingers intertwining with hers as they breathe together. There is something so intimate in the action that Zethrid looks away, as if she is glancing upon one of the other couples having unadulterated sex in the dark corners of the hallways.

“Apologies, Zethrid,” he calls to her. His voice is husked, straining with need for Allura. He pulls away from Allura as if pained by it. “What chores are these?”

She deadpans, “We all gotta pull our weight here. You’re both needed to work on rebuilding vehicles and converting them to solar power. Merla’s orders.”

Allura’s brow raises. “Merla?”

Zethrid calls over her shoulder, “Yeah, she figured you two need something else to do besides each other.”

Allura blinks in confusion. Lotor makes a noise in the back of his throat. He walks forward, his wild hair streaming behind him. “But we’ve not—that is to say, we’ve not actually—”

“—I don’t wanna hear the details,” Zethrid complains lightly. “I woke up at two in the morning and heard _enough_.”

Suddenly, Allura’s eyes widen in recognition. “Oh, you mean _doing each other_, as in—” She squeaks, her face turning red. “I thought we were being very quiet.” Her legs tighten together with the memory.

“Yeah, well, there’s something about rhythmic rustling that gives the game away, princess,” Zethrid retorts, a merry tease in her gruff voice.

Lotor has the grace to look proud, puffing out his chest, the air conditioning catching his hair and lifting it up like the feathers of a peacock.

* * *

Later that day, Lotor is kneeling outside in the harsh sunlight of Olkarion, his hair pulled up in a bun. His eyes narrow as he tilts his head, inspecting a half-sunken trunk, which had been protected from the mudslides in part by a stone wall wrapping around what was once a parking lot. “Allura,” he calls. “Love, I do think this one might be salvageable.”

“Oh, good,” comes her distant voice, which is strained. “Because these others would require quite a bit of digging, and it looks like the cement…crushed the engines.”

Without proper equipment, Lotor finds himself using his bare hands to dig at the dirt. He grimaces as his fingernails darken from the dirt clods. Then he gets the idea to look for scrap metal—pipes—anything to use as a digging tool. “It figures,” he mutters under his breath, “Merla _would_ give me the dirty job.”

There is the soft patter of footsteps, and then Allura drops down beside him. Her temples shine with sweat from the heat of the day. “We can’t dig this out with three hands,” she teases. Her one arm still is locked in its cast. “I believe we may be able to use one of those metal sheets over there as leverage to scoop the dirt out.”

Lotor turns to her. Allura’s eyes are wide with innocence and simple calculation.

Their lips are inches from each other.

“An astute observation,” he murmurs to her. "I do love your problem-solving spirit." 

Her lips stretch in delight. “And I love it when you get dirty,” she whispers.

He can’t help it; he leans in to kiss her. And she makes a happy noise against him, even as they kneel in dirt and debris, the beautiful island of Olkarion still blackened from the air strikes.

“You won’t like it,” he teases her lightly, “when you go to sleep next to me tonight.”

She quirks a brow and nudges her nose against his. “We did capture all that rain water in buckets, you know. I’m sure we could convince them to give us one. At least to get us through until we can drive to the beach again.”

His eyes search hers. “And bathe in the ocean?”

“Something like that.” Her own dirty fingers curl around his. “Now, come on, let’s unearth this truck.”

But as they pull one of the metal sheets away to use it, Lotor flinches in surprise.

There, beneath the metal sheets, snoozing lazily in the dirt and surrounded by the remains of barbeque chips, is the cat named Kova. His black fur is dirty and looks gray with ash, but when his eyes open, bleary with sleep, his slit pupils dilate instantly at the sight of Lotor. He stumbles up on his paws, meowing pathetically. His tail straightens up, and ash falls from him. 

Lotor’s heart gives out. He falls to his knees, his eyes watering. “Kova, old boy?” He opens his dirty arms, and the cat jumps onto him, meowing. Lotor squeezes his eyes shut, embracing the cat as tightly as he can.

Kova nuzzles his head against Lotor’s scruffy cheek, happy. He begins to groom Lotor’s scruff with his sandpaper tongue, insistent.

The man laughs. It’s a merry sound with a hint of tears. And then the tears begin to fall from his eyes, and he remains there in the dirt, crying over the pet he thought he’d lost in the strikes. “How in the world did you survive up here?” Lotor whispers incredulously. He pulls the cat away, inspecting him for injuries and finding none, save for his back paws being covered in black grease.

Kova purrs in delight of human touch, moving to even accept love from Allura, who reaches out to give him a little scratch under his ashen chin.

“He’s very dirty,” she giggles, even as her own eyes mist. Kova is the second survivor they have found in the above-ground.

Only the second, after Axca.

The cat slinks down on his belly and turns on his back, purring still as Lotor pets him.

Lotor’s velvet voice is hitched. “We’ll need another bucket of water for him, then. Though I do not have pet-safe soap. And what will he eat? All of his food is—”

His throat tightens up hard.

Allura gives him a soft, merry look. “We’ll figure it out,” she says. “And do look at him—he hasn’t starved out here.”

Lotor blinked tears from his eyes, inspecting Kova more closely. He rubs the little cat’s belly, realizing that Kova does in fact appear to have put on weight. He makes a noise of confusion, poking at the cat’s slightly larger belly. His white brows knit together. “How could you possibly be a glutton in the middle of all this?”

And as they uncover more of Kova’s nest, they discover that the cat has managed to find many field mice and eat them, along with various scraps of human food, like the barbeque chips.

Allura looks both ill and amused. “Oh, he’s certainly getting a bath before he sleeps with us. And you are too, sir. Since he licked you.”

Lotor is overwhelmed yet. He looks at Kova, who swats at him insistently for attention, meowing in a whine. Kova’s little black paws smear grease on his bare arms and his white shirt. The man tears up again, that somehow this little cat had managed to dodge all the air strikes and thrive.

His long fingers stroke Kova’s dirty little toe beans.

Feeling the life in him.

Lotor’s breath hitches as he gathers up the cat, holding Kova to him as if he were glass. Kova happily snuggles into Lotor’s arms, purring and nuzzling his nose against the man’s chest. His claws grab into Lotor’s shirt. “I thought he was dead,” he whispers. A guilt begins to work into him. His white brows knit together in pain. “I should have…I should have looked for him. Maybe he’s been looking for me, all this time.”

Allura searches his eyes, then leans forward and scratches Kova’s ear. The cat hardly moves, in want of love and Lotor. “We didn’t know to look for Axca either,” she says softly. “The important thing is that they’re both here with us now.”

He looks down, holding his cat as if it were a child. Kova looks up at him with utter trust and affection, his long tail sweeping against Lotor’s leg.

Lotor swallows hard. He leans down a bit and nuzzles his cheek against Kova’s face.

When Kova nuzzles him back, he smiles, even as tears stream down his cheeks.

* * *

That night, Lotor is exhausted, more so than usual. Between the emotions of finding Kova so dirty and desperate for attention, and then having to begin digging out the truck, he feels a bone-deep ache in him. He sits outside the main entrance to the shelter, a bucket of water beside him. He washes his hands, which are stiff. Then he pulls off his shirt and dunks it into the water, scrubbing it with his bar of soap in hopes of being acceptable for Allura.

Lotor closes his eyes for a moment and struggles to reopen them. He eventually realizes he’s slipping toward the dirt, until he finds himself lying there, staring up at the sunset, too exhausted to move.

A now-clean Kova meows in concern, climbing up his leg and setting his paws on his chest. He begins to groom Lotor’s scruffy beard once more, insistently. Worried.

“Ngh.” Lotor weakly raises an arm to pet Kova. “Apologies, old boy. I’m just tired.”

Kova is still slightly wet from his own bath in a bucket of rain water. His black fur glimmers with oranges and purples in the sunset. He leaves little wet paw prints on Lotor’s chest, and then he flops down on top of the human, curling up to peer out as a protective little guardian.

The man sighs, attempting to ignore the searing pull of several muscles. Kova raises and lowers with his breath.

Lotor moans. “I hope this is from simply trying to dig out that truck. And not…something else.”

But Kova is ever the minimalist in conversation and so manages little more than a chirp in response.

Eventually, a curious and concerned Allura Singh appears from out of the shelter entrance, her hair and skin gleaming wet from trying to wipe herself clean as best as she can. Her cast still bears a few dirt marks, and she wears a clean pink shirt that had been found on a scavenge. It’s the slightest bit short on her, and so it shows her midriff when she raises her arms. “Lotor?”

He doesn’t move in response but manages another halted moan.

Allura kneels beside him, peering over him in slight worry. She offers a gentle pat to little Kova’s head. “Lotor, are you quite alright?”

He looks up at her, his face haggard and eyes bleary. “I’ll be fine.” There is a croak in his voice. “I simply am unable to move.” He struggles to hide the small spark of foreboding in him, which Allura can sense.

Her white brows knit together, and she gently shoos Kova off of him, then grabs the washcloth from the edge of the bucket. “We’ve done far more work than this before,” she teases softly, but there is a worry line in her brow. “Don’t tell me you’re wearing down.”

She awkwardly tries to scrub the washcloth onto the bar of soap with one hand, damning her cast once more. And then she moves to scrub at his dirty cheek, the white suds sinking against his dark skin.

Lotor closes his eyes in relief. He leans into her touch, fulling trusting of her with his body. 

Allura whispers to him weakly, “Well, don’t you worry. You’ll sleep tonight and be good as new tomorrow.”

His velvet voice breaks suddenly. “I don’t know.” He tries to twitch his fingers, and it sparks pain through him. “I’m so tired, love. So very tired.”

There are multiple meanings in his words.

She swallows down emotion. That moment is not the first one where she feels a sudden surge of anger against those who had bombed the sky. For all their merry conversation, both her and Lotor are suffering. This altered world demands harder work with fewer luxuries. She sees the toll of it upon Lotor’s face....the remaining guilt that he had given up on Kova before he needed to...

Allura lovingly sweeps the washcloth down his sweaty neck. There is the echo of wild animals in the distance.

She begins to scrub at Lotor more insistently, earning an exhausted, questioning grump from him. “We need to get inside, all of us, very soon.”

“I can’t move,” he complains airily.

“You’ll have to,” she says, looking up with a bit more worry, and then looking over to Kova, who has already scooted toward the metal doors of the entrance, attempting to burrow beside one, his ears flicked up in alert fear.

Lotor tiredly forces himself on his elbow, his dirty hair straggling down his cheek. “I feel as though I pulled every muscle.”

Allura moves to scrub at his hair. He leans his temple against her shoulder, breathing in her scent deeply. She retorts to him, “It was hard work, but no harder than other things we’ve done.” A concern is beginning to work through her. She takes time to place her hand on his forehead, checking for fever. “You’re acting awfully strange. Did anything bite you while we were out today?”

His brow puzzles. “No,” he murmurs, his voice faint against her shoulder.

“Did Kova scratch you?” she presses, pulling away.

It’s all Lotor can do to hold himself up, wearily watching her as she wets his hair, using her fingers to untangle it. “Kova,” he retorts lightly, “never hurts me.”

“Well,_ something_ is off with you,” Allura complains, growing more worried. “Are you dehydrated?”

His thoughts are beginning to slow. He inhales deeply, then forgets to respond.

She gives him a look. “Let’s get you inside with some clean water and a bed. And Kova to look after you.”

Lotor’s blue eyes swivel to her. “Yes,” he whispers again, as if even the word requires too much energy.

It’s all Allura can manage, to help him to stand and walk back into the shelter and down the stairs to their little makeshift bed.

Her heart tightens with fear, that something is deeply wrong. She hangs his still-drying shirt on the makeshift clothes line running from the rafters above.

Lotor fairly collapses onto the blanket on the floor, unable to pull the sleeping bag they shared over him. Kova whines, nuzzling his head against Lotor’s to receive no love. Eventually, the cat circles and then plops down in the crook of Lotor’s neck, half-covered by white hair.

Allura watches him in worry, pulling out her little bottle of aspirin and wondering if it would help him—or hurt him, in whatever state he’s in. She lays beside him, curling up against his side.

In his sleep, he makes a soft noise of pain, his face tightening.

She recoils in fear, and then awkwardly lays with a distance between herself and him.

* * *

Lotor does not improve by the next morning.

His pain worsens in the strangest of ways. His stiff joints from digging out the truck nearly lock into place, such that attempting to sit up in the morning leaves him gasping with breath. There is a fire in his veins that makes breathing difficult.

“No,” he breathes, his eyes widening in fear. “No.”

Emotion swarms through him, to such a point that he misses Kova pawing at him, then moving to paw at the sleeping Allura.

The cat knows.

Kova has seen this before.

Allura is bleary-eyed and exhausted herself from watching over Lotor as he sleeps, but she soon awakens from the nudge of a furry head against her cheek—and then the sound of Lotor’s unsteady breathing beside her, and his lithe form crumpled over on itself.

She startles, the sleep draining from her as she sits up. The sleeping bag around them both falls aside. She moves to him. “Lotor? What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

There is a deep haunt in his eyes as he stares at the floor, struggling through another wave of pain.

He does not respond to Allura.

She panics. “Ah, um.” She begins looking over his skin for any strange bites. And then her eyes widen when she realizes that Lotor is bleeding from his nose, his eyes unfocused.

Her gasp is what wakes up the others around them. “Lotor?!” Her own eyes begin to water. “Lotor, please, can you hear me?” She reaches up, wincing as she raises even her broken arm in hopes of helping him lay back down.

Bloodshot, blue eyes snap to her. There is a moment of clarity in him. His ears are ringing, his blood surging madly through his veins. He shakily raises his hand to wipe his face, staring down at the blood smeared across his fingers. He cannot look away from it for a time, until Allura lowers his arm for him, turning his neck. His spine flares with pain, and he closes his eyes, dizzy from it. “S-,” he manages to rasp, “sorry.”

The others are beginning to crowd around, helping Allura to lay Lotor back down. Shiro is the one who looks most haunted—reflecting the same fear as on Lotor’s face.

Kova is watching in worry, his little ears flicking back and forth.

Allura is crying now. “I don’t understand what’s wrong. He was fine yesterday, and then last night, he was very tired. But…”

Shiro begins rolling up the sides of the blankets. “I know what this is,” he says roughly. “But I didn’t think he still had it.”

“Had what?” Allura demands in fear.

Shiro is wrapping a wooden board into the blanket, to use as a hand-hold. “QTS. Quintessence Toxicity Syndrome. He’s about to be in a lot more pain than he is.”

The woman pales. She blinks, not quite understanding. She has a distinct memory of a healthy and sexy Lotor Dalir staring down at her in a hotel gift shop and murmuring that his mother had cured him of QTS long ago, when he was a child—the first of anyone with the illness to be cured.

From what she remembers, it is a cruel illness that targets the neurons in the body and disrupts normal transmission of neurotransmitters.

She understands now why she has never seen Honerva Dalir, who had been fully exposed to unfiltered quintessence while Lotor had been exposed only in utero.

Her breath hitches. “He said he was cured; how is this cured? Why would it appear now?”

Keith and Lance are awkwardly following Shiro’s guidance, moving Allura out of the way to roll up the other side of the blanket. They’re creating a makeshift stretcher to carry Lotor to the doctors on the other side of the underground shelter.

Lotor’s dazed eyes search for Allura. He shakily tries to reach out to her.

Shiro looks as pale as her, his lips pressed tightly together. “I’ve seen him take pills, in the past. He said they were for headaches, but…maybe it wasn’t.”

It’s then that Allura recalls Lotor searching over the remains of his own VIP tent, willing enough to overlook the twisted metals and the blasted remains of his wife, searching for something insistently, then managing a tight smile at her when he said it was _just a search for supplies_—

It’s been nearly two weeks since the bombings. If he had been taking medication all these years to manage his illness…

Hunk sleepily drops to his knees beside Shiro to even out the weight distribution. “Oh man, he doesn’t look good.”

A sweat has appeared on Lotor’s brow, the color in him seeping away. But he manages to turn his head, his bagged eyes raising up to the pink sight of Allura Singh. He swallows hard, his brows knitting together in concentration. “I am sorry, Allura.” His voice roughens hard with a deep strain of his vocal cords. He tries to reach out to her again with his bloodied fingers. “I am s-sorry.”

He’s never told anyone that a cure simply meant management of his symptoms.

* * *

Allura soon finds herself scrounging through debris in the aboveground, her eyes blurry, fingers trembling. Lotor is lying sedated in the medical tent below, in an induced sleep. But there is not enough medication for the doctors to spend on a prolonged condition like his.

“It has to be here,” she whispers tightly. She can hardly see her surroundings in the blur of her vision. The Sincline tents are utterly decimated, with warped metal and charred tables. She slices the side of her hand on a sharp edge, and she recoils back, sobbing. Her broken arm throbs in pain from the movement to cover her injured hand.

She sits there in middle of destruction, her full lips quivering, with an occasional awed hiccup of sorrow.

Lotor had been sweating hard by the time team Voltron had gotten him to the medical tent. Every jostle had inspired a tight-lipped moan from him.

“It has to be here,” she cries to the air, which whips hotly against her.

But it isn’t.

Her eyes burn with increasing rage and sorrow. Every time, for every little success, it seems the new world rips things from them. She and Lotor have touched each other in many ways, but the single foil-lined packet in her pocket remains. He has found his cat but is losing his health. She’s found the love of her life, but now can’t even hold his hand without causing him pain.

Whatever medication he’s used—it’s something that is not generic. Something that a regular aspirin would be unable to match.

Her eyes burn hard as she sits there in the dirt and debris, feeling utterly useless. Her memories are haunted by the daze in Lotor’s eyes.

The foreboding knowledge, that this has happened before.

So distraught is she that she misses the sight of another person digging through rubble on the far side of the Pits—something that this man has been doing every day since he’s been able to go above ground.

It’s in the middle of Allura’s sobs, surrounded by the warped pieces of a Sincline bike, that she finally catches sight of a hulking figure kneeling before her. She flinches and looks up.

One Zarkon Dalir lowers to his knees, his broad shoulders blocking the sunlight to cast shadow upon her. His face is still pale from his own recent illness, his violet highlights fading out to gray. Stress has deepened the wrinkles on his face. “I have found what you seek.”

Allura stares up at him, eyes wide in bewilderment.

He swallows hard. His dark eyes are brightening with tears for the first time since the bombings. He opens up a large palm to reveal a half-empty container of pills, with the white cap slightly scorched. “My idiot son has sometimes forgotten to bring them.” His deep voice grows halted. “He thinks himself invincible. I’ve…I’ve never left without backup. But this is all I had in my trailer.”

Allura stares at the pills, unable to comprehend that is the coveted medication Lotor needs to live without pain.

Zarkon nudges it into her uninjured hand, then grabs onto her cut palm, applying pressure to her wound. “Tell him _you_ found them. He would be irritated to know it came from me.”

The woman stares at him dumbly, her eyes widening as tears slip down her cheeks. “You’re…you’re helping us?”

His scarred lips pull in sorrow. He fails to speak for a time, instead focusing on her injured hand. There is something fatherly in his actions. “You are honorable, daughter of Alfor.” His eyes are tired. “And I love my son, as irritating as he may be.”

* * *

Soon, Lotor sits up shakily on the examination table, his muscles weak. He is diminished in form, appearing unlike his image on magazine covers. He is pouring with sweat with his hair plastered to him, his eyes in a daze as the medication kicks in. He leans against his father’s shoulder as he inhales in relief.

Zarkon dares to stroke his son’s temple.

Lotor is too tired and disjointed from anesthesia to complain about familial affection.

Allura paces before them. “We have four days of medication,” she says. Her voice is tight. “But you said there is a great storage of it at your estate? In Iran?”

Zarkon nods, his dark eyes watching her wearily. There is a protective edge in him as he strokes Lotor’s temples, for all the bad blood between them. “My wife synthesized this medication and requires it for herself as well.”

Allura’s breath hitches. “In four days, then, he’ll run out of medication. Is that enough to give him any extra time?”

Lotor’s bleary, bloodshot eyes watch her with dread. His greatest weakness is laid bare to her now. He is resting against his father. All of this is his worst nightmare. He is too tired to speak, to defend himself or admit his limitations.

“The medication,” the father says, voice straining, “must be at therapeutic levels to allow him to go several days without it.”

“So, he has only four days, then.” Allura returns to pacing, feeling slightly betrayed that Lotor had not felt comfortable enough to speak to her about this part of his life. She dares to look at him, her face pained.

His eyes lower to avoid her gaze. There is shame in his bowed shoulders.

Allura recalls him leaning against the fences, flirting with her without a care in the world. Some of the things he does—his dramas, his indulgences—finally make sense.

Her heart clenches tight.

She turns to Zarkon, her voice raising in earnestness. “Lotor and I have been working on recovering vehicles for transport. If I can find a way off this island, then I will go to Iran with him and find what he needs.”

Lotor’s eyes flicker to hers in surprise.

“But I do not know the terrain,” she confesses. She awkwardly waves her chicken wing of a broken arm. “We’re both a little worse for wear. And if his health deteriorates, then we’ll be in even more trouble. Would you be willing to go with me, sir?”

This is the greatest possible sacrifice that Allura Singh could offer—to leave the protective sanctuary for Lotor’s sake—to ask Zarkon Dalir for help….

Zarkon watches her. Those dark eyes of his—nearly red—are watery with turmoil. With hope. “Yes.”

* * *

Olkarion is a man-made island within the Mediterranean Sea, near Cyprus. It once boasted several state-of-the-art bridges connecting it to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. But they are all floating in pieces in the Mediterranean. They will have to cross the sea and over 1,500 miles through Syria and Iraq to get to Iran.

The whole of team Voltron and other groups work together to build a makeshift ferry to reach the mainland. They scavenge for oil barrels and other floatable objects to line wooden planks. They use precious rope from the storages to tie it all together.

The trip to Iran offers other possibilities. More scavenging opportunities.

Perhaps access to life-saving supplies.

Allura is a stressed frenzy of nerves as she loads her own meager supplies onto the truck bed. She’s stolen scraps of burnt tarps to cover the food and blankets. There is no telling what or who they might encounter. Zarkon believes there are likely other factions of people who have survived—and that they might not be friendly.

She imagines that her and Zarkon will take the team Voltron truck—one of the three vehicles they have recovered and loaded with a solar-powered generator. The truck was what Hunk had been driving just before the explosion. Its sides are dented in from debris but is otherwise functional. The Voltron “V” is largely scratched out, and she thinks perhaps Zarkon Dalir will not mind it for that reason. Its air conditioning still appears to work as well.

Allura imagines she and Zarkon will endure many awkward silences, with an achy Lotor sitting between them. A part of her dreads and wants it all at the same time. For this could finally be her opportunity to heal the rift between the Singhs and the Dalirs.

But then she turns around to see—of all people—Keith Kogane standing there. His jeans are worn at the knees from hard work, his face having sprouted a dark beard. He looks older now. “You think you’re going without us?” he says, voice dry.

She presses her lips together. “I can’t ask anyone to go on this journey with me. It may be quite dangerous and miserable.”

“Sounds like fun.” Keith tilts his head, raising a brow. He has his switchblade in his hand and has a handmade spear strapped to his back. This is the most alive Allura has ever seen him. “Better than being cooped up with thousands of strangers, anyway.”

Allura makes a noise of surprise. “Did you…make that spear yourself?”

His lips stretch in a hint of a smile. His gray eyes carry an almost merry glint. “Three years of apocalypse summer boot camp. And there’s no way I’m going to sit here and let you do all the hard work.”

Lance suddenly appears in the distance, from behind Keith. Strapped to his back is a long rifle he’s borrowed from an Olkari guard after having proven he’s quite the sharpshooter. “Hey guys, wait up! I’m coming with you too!”

“What in the world…?” Allura breathes.

Lance breathlessly skids to a halt. He’s one of the few men still bearing peach fuzz on his face, but there’s a new stress line in his brow from days and days of feeling lost. “Look, so maybe I’m not, like, as cool as Keith or whatever with the apocalypse training, but….” His eyes widen in earnestness. “I want to help. And I_ can_ help! Merla just tossed this whole other list of things we need to find for other people. And I…”

The boy’s throat tightens. “I can help look for stuff, you know? And I can shoot. You might need that.”

Behind them also appears Shiro, tossing in tactical gear and a generator into the back of a second truck. That vehicle is the one she and Lotor had been trying to dig out the other day. It’s still streaked with mud, but beneath that gleams the emblem of a heavy-duty brand. “I did a few tours for an outpost in Iran, back in the day.” His face is tight but merry. “Between me and Zarkon, we should know how to avoid populated areas.”

Allura’s breath hitches as she stares at her many friends. She swallows hard. “Why would—? None of you have to come with us.”

“Yeah, we do.” Keith jumps up into the second truck. “We got your back on this.”

“But…but why?” Allura sputters. “You’re all endangering yourselves.”

Lance leans against the truck. He cocks the gun, raising a brow. “Two words. Badass road trip.”

“…That’s actually three words, Lance,” she says hesitantly, even as hilarity and awe waters her voice.

“Okay, fine.” He playfully rolls his eyes. “Three words. But you know what’s three _syllables_?”

She deadpans, “What’s that, Lance?”

“Family.” There is a vulnerable edge in him. “And that’s what you are, so I’m doing, even if it means I gotta talk to Mr. Grumpy Face sometimes too.”

There is, on occasion, small glimmers of light from the airy boy.

Allura’s throat tightens up. Her eyes water.

Meanwhile, Keith counts the syllables for _family_ on his fingers, narrowing his eyes in confusion when he realizes it could be either two or three syllables depending on pronunciation. "Wait a minute..." 

But for all the time Allura has spent with Lotor, it seems her larger family has not forgotten or forsaken her. And the emotions rise up in her so sharply that she fails to retort with a smart quip. 

Then Lance fully ruins it. His eyes slide sideways. “Also, I wanna know if Lotor’s mom is as hot as everyone says. That’s where we’re going, right? To their house, right? Because like, I’ve heard she’s not even actually human? And that her quintessence exposure totally makes her look like—”

Keith forgets about his lingual endeavors. He slaps his hand over Lance’s mouth, shutting him up just as Zarkon Dalir appears from the entrance of the shelter. “Yeah, how about you just keep that one to yourself.”

Lance sputters, pulling away with a flail. “Oh, come on. I know all of you are curious too. Don’t even try to hide it.” His cheeks flush, and he mutters under his breath. One of the lists in his hand is from Pidge. It’s a group agreement that Pidge and Hunk would stay behind to keep watch on the generators and to continue working on new technologies, to reclaim Olkari City. On the list Lance carries is one peculiar item, scrawled in Pidge’s sloppy handwriting: _A picture of Honerva Dalir because I wanna see what she looks like. _

Zarkon approaches, carrying a duffel bag of more supplies, including flashlights and tools. His eyes briefly flicker to the small group in suspicion. They are all so terribly young compared to him.

He exhales a suffering sigh. “Daughter of Alfor, must you bring your entire entourage with you?”

She stands there, her cheeks still flushed with emotion and with a barely contained squeak from Lance’s shenanigans. “Ah, well—” She nervously taps her fingers. “They’re not actually my entire entourage, but—”

Lance cuts in, pointing his gun to the great outer wastelands. He pulls the trigger, and in a blink of an eye, a bullet surges dead-center into fallen sign. “Gonna need some sharpshooters to guard all the supplies, right?”

Zarkon narrows his eyes, inspecting the shot, then turns away, accepting the boy’s presence. “Hn.”

Lance looks at him apprehensively, notices that Zarkon hasn’t actually kicked him out, and then slightly fist-pumps while Keith sighs.

“We _will_ need that third truck, though,” Shiro murmurs. “Between all of us, our supplies, and what we hope to find on this trip. Think we can convince leadership to give it to us?”

And it’s then that a final voice echoes over the group. It’s rough. “Have no fear, Shiro.” Lotor stands at the entrance, looking exhausted and pale, but swinging the keys to the third truck from his long fingers. “I have already secured it from Merla.”

Allura’s eyes widen at the sight of him standing back up on his feet. The lines of his body still seem tight and worn, yet he stands tall. 

He fails to meet her eye as he moves toward them, appearing as a wraith in the sunset. “But I will not be seen as dead weight on this trip. I will drive the third truck until I cannot.”

She moves forward in surprise. “Lotor—?”

He turns to her. His face is hard with determination, his brow glimmering with the slightest of sweats from exertion. But he softens as he stares at her. “—I don’t want this trip to be on my behalf alone,” he declares. There is a pride in him that has not broken beneath the weight of illness. “If I can help scavenge for the needs of others, I will do it.”

The truck keys jingle in his hands from the slightest of shakes. It is the adrenaline in his system, as he stares at Allura. In her rush to prepare for the trip and in his own attempts to recalibrate from his relapse, they have not had time to talk.

The world is spiraling quickly now, all things rushing—

She searches his eyes.

Then, she holds out her hand, tearing up. “If you believe you can handle it, I will not argue with you.” Her voice breaks. “But I…I thought you were_ dying_ for a time, you know? So if you start feeling ill, please tell me. _Please_.”

He grabs on tightly with an enduring strength, his eyes misting with the realization that he has not lost her love. He swallows hard. A part of him still looks frail in a way that would not inspire magazine covers. “I will not hide anything from you again,” he promises. "But you must understand why I would hide this." 

Allura squeezes his hand. "I'm trying to," she whispers. She's let Lotor touch her in ways no one else has. She thought she knew him, and yet here he is, with a whole hidden side to his life. A dark side that has scared her deeply. She has millions of questions. She wonders why he has not told her about himself yet. 

The man swallows down emotion. "That's all I can ask, then. The attempt." 

There is an edge of defeat in his usually confident, velvet voice. 

Her white brows knit together in pain. For all that she doesn't understand, she holds his hand as if it is glass. She wants him to know that she still loves him for all that he is, but she does not know how to touch him. She fears hurting him. 

Even now, she fears that every touch could be their last.

But somewhere in the background, one Lance gags over their handholding, and Keith groans, and Zarkon grumps—and it all disturbs the sacredness of the moment.

Allura pulls away from him, awkwardly wiping her tears with her good hand.

The keys in Lotor’s hand jingle once more, his fingers still open in want for her form, to embrace her. 

He swallows hard. He fears that he will still lose her, somehow. If not on the trip itself, then by virtue of her realization that the legendary Lotor Dalir masks a great weakness. That there is a demon in his blood that swarms beneath his skin—that she’ll always see his weaknesses that he’d been so desperate to hide, rather than his strengths or the_ life_ in him yet.

He tightens his fingers on the keys, in hopes of proving that he is still worthy of her. “You do not have to do this if you don’t want to.”

He knows this trip is dangerous.

They could die.

And no one would be coming to save them.

Allura raises her chin in a way that mimics his own actions. “I made my decision long ago.” Then her voice lifts up in a tired humor. “I’ve been wanting to meet your mother anyway.”

* * *

Soon, Pidge stands beside Merla, her eyes big and wide with tears. Hunk is beside her, choked up with tears of his own and holding onto an unsettled Kova. Merla stands with her hand on Pidge’s shoulder. Her own face is tight as she watches her new family prepare to leave.

But Merla can’t go with them. It is the first time she realizes the burden of an empire—that the twenty-seven thousand people in the shelters look to her for guidance and organization, and that Pidge and Hunk will be needed to fill the massive hole left in the engineering team by the temporary loss of Allura and Lotor. She raises her own cell phone, which is now connected in a three-way call between herself, Allura, and Lotor. They are testing their communication technology. She presses, her smooth voice slightly wavering, “We’ll be monitoring your progress. It’s very important you tell me what you find out there—the scraps of this city will not be enough to sustain this population forever.”

“_Roger that_,” says Allura, voice tight. “_Between myself and Lance, we have all of your lists. We’ll try to find everything we can. And perhaps we’ll discover more about who bombed us in the first place_.”

Merla fails to speak for a moment. She is watching the trucks as they rumble in the short distance, preparing to set off, while Zarkon and Shiro double-check the truck beds for every supply. Keith is standing in the back, helping to secure bags down for the long haul. Her mind’s eye flashes with Shiro standing to protect her, Keith teaching her how to make a bow and arrow, Lotor being carried off to the infirmary, with Allura crying after him….

Her pale fingers tighten on the cell phone. She swallows hard, closing her eyes. “I’ve lost one family. I will _not _lose another, do you understand me?”

Lotor’s velvet voice crackles in over the connection. He sounds tired, but merry. “_Is that genuine worry I hear from you_?”

She hesitates. She pulls her hand away from Pidge’s trembling shoulder and turns away from Hunk as well. Genuine emotion is something she so rarely has felt prior to the bombings. Now, it is something she struggles to ignore. “You know how I am,” she eventually says, voice airy.

His voice softens. “_I do_.”

And there is a level of understanding in his tone that leaves her with burning eyes.

“_Don’t worry, Merla_,” chimed in Allura’s sweet alto voice. “_We’ve quite the crew with us, you know. We’ll return safe and sound_.”

Lotor manages a deadpan of a joke. “_And we’ll return to a dictatorship, with Merla as the self-proclaimed leader_.”

The world keeps taking and giving her things at the same time. It leaves her feeling frazzled and raw. She eventually lowers the phone, hanging up from the call. The wind blows her red hair into her eyes, but she does not brush it away, in hopes of hiding the tears in her eyes.

She’s worked to give them as much as she could, convincing leadership to provide them with extra rations, weaponry, medical supplies—which required even flirting with one of the doctors—

But she worries it is not enough.

So many things can go wrong in this gamble…. Her breath hitches hard suddenly. She suddenly longs for the days when her biggest worries were a silly business merger with Galra Tech and whether she’d lost her red panties in Lotor’s room or in some other man’s hotel suite.

But she inhales shakily, attempting to steady her breathing.

She knows she has an empire to run. And she also has to prepare for what it means if they don’t return. And if they do.

She has visions of a strong and merry Lotor Dalir carrying Allura Singh piggyback, wearing fine clothes from his estate—the two of them laughing happily, with Lotor’s strange medication hidden in many pockets. No doubt, Keith would be carrying a large sack of supplies behind them, grumbling in his own way about having to do all the work. He’d be sunburnt and silently pleased about hunting in the wild, with many great observations and stories to tell.

Lance…he would have a poorly tied turban upon his head and many wildly inaccurate stories about his own heroism. Perhaps a newly acquired taste for saffron rice pudding.

Shiro would be the one attempting to rein them all in, frazzled after playing babysitter for over a full week, and complaining that he felt much older.

And Zarkon…

* * *

Lotor lowers his phone as the passenger door to his truck opens. Zarkon slips into the passenger seat, a large assault rifle in hand. He says nothing as he loads it, his face grim. Lotor stares and dares to deadpan, “Do you truly intend to kill another person, if we should encounter them?”

His father does not look up. He switches off the safety with an expertise—a remnant of his military experience, from before his racing career. “I do not want to kill.” His voice tightens roughly. “But we will cross through the old battlefields and powerline dead zones to avoid people as much as we can. There may be predators, human or otherwise.”

The younger man runs the back of his hand against his forehead, already sweating from the heat of the day. “Father, I do not know if this journey all the way to Iran is worth it. Perhaps we could simply scavenge the coastline for supplies.”

“You will not find what you need there.”

“No, but there were other, more generic medications that _did_ help to some degree. Perhaps I could search for those, and save us from so long a—”

“—My son.” Zarkon leans back in his seat and eyes Lotor hard. “Through you, the people here have been reminded that our resources are finite. Many people have many illnesses and are running out of supplies. They need a chemist. Someone who can synthesize molecules, medicines.”

Lotor stares at his father, eyes wide. “…You intend to bring mother back with us?”

Zarkon hesitates, then nods. “Merla’s scavengers can be her eyes and hands, and we will all survive then.” His knuckles tighten on the rifle. “We will be together, for whatever happens next.”

The younger man falls silent for a time. He asks softly, “Do you honestly believe she can survive the trip here?” His voice breaks. “And—and father, her needs are so great. I cannot imagine her laying on the ground with nothing but a sleeping bag. Even with all the medication in the world, her symptoms are barely managed at times.”

Zarkon stares out the windshield, his eyes distant. “It is well that you worry for your mother. But she is capable of withstanding far more than you think. Do not diminish her.”

Lotor looks down at the steering wheel. He runs his calloused thumb over the brand emblem. “If we bring creature comforts to sustain her, the others in that shelter will grow to envy and despise her. She already looks different from most. I will not see her turned into a spectacle.” His voice catches hard. “It would be better to find someone else. Surely, we are not the only survivors in the world.”

It is then that Zarkon turns to him. His old scar that storms down his face gleams white in the sun. “There may not be another alive who can do what your mother does. And do not fear, my son. You know I would protect her with my life, just as I would protect you.”

Lotor searches his father’s gaze.

His throat tightens up hard, his own eyes beginning to mist. He recalls his father stroking his temple in the infirmary. “I quite thought you despised me.”

Zarkon grumps, looking away. “…I no longer have an empire to disown you from.”

There is an odd strain in Zarkon’s voice, and the reply is so strange that Lotor’s wide lips stretch, even through his tears.

“Ah, yes,” he says. “The perfect excuse to suddenly accept your son.”

The father remains silent for a time, then dares to say, his voice catching oddly. “Do not ruin this with your sarcasm.”

Lotor’s sharp tongue rises up before he can think about it. “Or perhaps I should, since you walked in on me and Allura.”

A pause.

Zarkon blinks, his memory struggling to catch up to him. And then his old face begins to flush with the memory, and he grumps under his breath—something of a prayer for patience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all! It's been a little while on this story! But I did a poll on tumblr, and it seemed there were still some interested parties in this story, so here is another update for you! 
> 
> In this episode, I do tend to play around with AR's mention of how Lotor had quintessence toxicity syndrome as a child. But unlike canon, where he is fully in remission, he still actively suffers from it here. I feel like a lot of apocalypse stories don't tend to grapple with the problems of chronic illness in a less-than-ideal world?? I'd like the chance to explore that here, haha. Especially in the form of Lotor Dalir himself. 
> 
> On that note, I hope you're all doing well in COVID/post-wave 1 COVID world. I feel like this story means different things to me now that we've all been playing apocalypse bingo ourselves. But if you'd like to still see more, I can post more! Please let me know what you think, thank you!


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